the presence
of the Council of Seven and caused him to relate his story to them; of
the scepticism with which that story had been received, of the
difficulty which he had encountered in persuading the Council that it
was their duty to permit him, as High Priest, to sift the story and
ascertain how far it was true; and how, having at length secured their
somewhat reluctant consent, he had triumphantly accomplished his mission
and now had the duty and pleasure to present them to the divine Manco,
promised of Heaven as the deliverer and restorer of the Peruvian nation.

"But how are we to be assured beyond all possibility of doubt that this
young man is in very deed the reincarnated Manco, whose return was
foretold by the prophet Titucocha, and for whom the nation has looked
these three hundred years and more?" demanded Huanacocha, the head of
the Council of Seven. "He is a white man to begin with; and for my part
it has always been in my mind that when the divine Manco should deign to
return to us, he would come in the form of a full-blooded Peruvian
Indian, even as we are."

A low murmur of concurrence and approval filled the room at these bold
words of Huanacocha, and every eye was at once turned upon Tiahuana to
see what reply he would give to this apparently unanswerable objection.

"Why should you suppose any such thing?" demanded Tiahuana in a cold,
level voice. "There is no word in Titucocha's prophecy, as handed down
to us in our records, to justify any such belief. I am prepared to
admit, if you like, that such an expectation was natural, but further
than that I cannot go. Nay, rather let me say that, taking into
consideration the careful minuteness with which Titucocha particularised
the several means of identification--every one of which has been
literally fulfilled in him whom you now see before you--I am convinced
that if our Lord the Sun had intended that his child should return to us
as an Indian, born of us and among us, Titucocha would have specifically
said so. But, as I have already reminded you, he did not. What he said
was that the re-incarnated Manco was to be the deliverer and restorer of
the ancient Peruvian nation; and who so fit to undertake and
successfully carry through this stupendous task as one born, and who has
lived all his life in England, that great nation of which we have all
heard, whose empire extends north and south, east and west, to the
uttermost parts of the earth, so tha