rican Indian, like his brother of the northern continent, will
endure the most frightfully excruciating tortures with stoical fortitude
if the occasion happens to demand it, he will not willingly subject
himself to even a very minor degree of suffering for the sake of
shielding those whom he has no particular object in serving. He felt
pretty well convinced that these craven wretches who had allowed
themselves to be corrupted into betraying their monarch would have very
little hesitation in also betraying their corrupters, especially as they
might feel assured that, Umu having taken the matter in hand, those
corrupters would henceforth have scant power or opportunity either to
reward or to punish. The hint conveyed by the building of a large fire
therefore proved quite sufficiently persuasive. In little more than ten
minutes the commander of the bodyguard found himself in possession of
all the information which the palace officials had it in their power to
communicate. This information, in brief, was to the effect that they
had, one and all, from the highest to the lowest, been heavily bribed by
the emissaries of Huanacocha and Xaxaguana to allow those two powerful
nobles, with a strong party of followers, to enter the palace in the
dead of night and abduct the person of the Inca, and to hold their peace
upon the matter until either Huanacocha or Xaxaguana should personally
give them leave to speak and tell them what to say. As the stories of
all four of the officials happened to agree, even down to the smallest
detail, Umu decided that he might venture to accept them as true;
whereupon the whole of the prisoners were hustled back into the palace
by way of the back entrance, driven down into one of the basement
chambers, and there securely locked up, with a corporal's guard in the
passage outside. The palace then being locked up, the troop mounted and
departed at a gallop for the house of Huanacocha.

This house, or palace as it might be more appropriately termed, was,
like most of the residences of the great Peruvian lords, a large and
sumptuous edifice, standing in its own spacious grounds. Umu's tactics
upon approaching it were similar to those which he had employed upon
approaching the palace; that is to say, upon entering the grounds he
caused his men to dismount and surround the building, which he then
entered, accompanied by a sergeant in charge of a squad of troopers. As
he unceremoniously made his way in