xplained that the roaring creature was not harmful, but gentle and
biddable; and I begged that other of the bars might be removed, so that
it might come forth and join us. That he acceded instantly to my request
gave me a good opinion of his own faithfulness and honesty; for a man of
a suspicious and crafty nature assuredly would have believed that my
request was but a trap laid for his destruction; and thereupon the bars
were removed. And the truth of my words was made manifest, as El Sabio
came instantly to Pablo and received his caresses with every sign of
gentleness and affection. But even Tizoc did not disguise his wonder
upon beholding this strange beast, for the largest four-footed creature
in all that valley, as he told me, was a little animal of the deer
species, that was not much bigger than a hare. And when I bade Pablo
mount upon El Sabio's back, the look of surprise in Tizoc's face changed
suddenly to an expression of troubled doubt, in which was also alarm.
Under his breath I heard him mutter, "Can it be that the prophecy will
be fulfilled?" But whatever the cause of his inward disturbance was, he
spoke not of it, but turned once more forward, and gave the order to
march.

[Illustration: THE FULFILMENT OF THE PROPHECY]

The crowd, seeing that no harm was like to come to them, pressed forward
once more, and gazed with open-mouthed wonder--and also, as it seemed to
me, with awe--at the prodigious spectacle which Pablo, gravely riding
upon the ass's back, presented to them. And so, with the guards before
and behind us, we marched onward into the Valley of Aztlan.

XVIII.

THE STRIKING OF A MATCH.

As we emerged from the nook in the mountain-side the whole of the valley
lay open before us, and never was a more lovely spot beheld by the eyes
of man. A half-dozen leagues in front of us rose the great mountain wall
which shut in its farther side, and about as far away to the right and
to the left these walls swept around in vast curves and joined the
cliffs through which we had come by the hollow way that tunnelled
beneath them. A noble lake extended nearly the whole length of the
valley, and covered near a third of its width, and so seemed less like a
lake than like a calm and majestic river. From the water-side the land
rose in broad terraces, broken by belts of timber and by many groups of
smaller trees, which, because of the regularity of their growth, I took
to be fruit plantations. All the open