ld weather for this Priest Captain fellow,"
Young commented, "if we've got hold of his boss miracle; and I guess
you're about right, Professor--he'll want t' take it out of our hides.
Just poke up th' Colonel t' telling all he knows about this old dodger.
Th' Colonel's got his tongue pretty well greased just now with his own
prime old Bourbon--pass me that jar, Rayburn, I don't mind if I have
another whack at it myself--and we may get something out of him that
will be useful. Try it on, Professor, any way. Here's luck, gentlemen."

That Young's tongue also was a little greased, as he put it, by this
very agreeable beverage was quite evident; but his wits were sharpened
rather than dulled by the drink, and his present suggestion evidently
was a very good one. As for Tizoc, his disposition towards us obviously
was most soft and friendly; and as his mind slowly absorbed the fact
that, somehow or another, the Priest Captain had made a fool of him with
a miracle that was not really a miracle at all, his choler rose in a
manner most favorable to our purposes. Yet this very feeling of
resentful anger--showing a growing irreverence of one to whom all the
traditions of his people gave reverence second only to that due to the
gods themselves--was startling evidence of the menace that our presence
was to the theocratic ruler's temporal and spiritual power. Therefore it
was with a keen curiosity that we listened--and Tizoc needed, to induce
him to talk freely, but little of the poking-up that Young had
suggested--to what was told us concerning the strange people among whom
we had come by ways so perilous, and of their chieftain, the Priest
Captain Itzacoatl--with whom, as no spirit of prophecy was needed to
tell us, we were destined soon to engage in a conflict that must be
fought out to the very death.

XIX.

THE SEEDS OF REVOLT.

For the sake of brevity I shall summarize here the statement that Tizoc
made to us, and for the sake of clearness I shall add to it some facts
of minor importance which came to our knowledge later--thus at once
exhibiting the whole of the troublous condition of affairs that stirred
dangerously the people dwelling in the Valley of Aztlan at the time of
our coming among them.

At this period the political situation, as I may term it, was
exceedingly critical. Three powerful factions were in existence; and
peace was preserved only by the generally diffused belief that open
revolt, on the part