en dead for more than three
months, and if th' other one hadn't been dead for more than three
hundred years, and if they both were here, I'd knuckle under and ask 'em
t' take my hat."

XXI.

THE WALLED CITY OF CULHUACAN.

Our use in turn of the field-glass was a mysterious performance that
aroused keenly the barge-master's curiosity. I heard him ask Tizoc for
an explanation of it; and Tizoc, who also was much interested, referred
his question to me. Had I been dealing with Tizoc alone I should have
tried to make the matter clear to him; but in the case of the
barge-master, whose feeling towards us, I was convinced, was anything
but friendly, I thought it wiser to be less frank. Therefore, covering
the action with a negligent motion of my hand, I screwed the glasses
close together, so that in looking through them there was to be seen
only a mass of indistinct objects looming up in a blurred cloud of
light, and so handed them to him. Naturally, neither he nor Tizoc
arrived at any very satisfactory conclusion in regard to the real use of
them; and from their talk it was evident that they conceived the
ceremony in which we had engaged in turn so earnestly to be in the
nature of a prayer to our gods. Fray Antonio was both shocked and pained
by their taking this view of the matter, and was for making a true
explanation to them; but at my urgent request he held his peace. Yet it
was evident that he brooded over the matter in his mind, and so was led
to earnest thoughts of the mission that had brought him hither into the
Valley of Aztlan. Therefore was I not surprised--though I certainly was
alarmed by the thought of what might be its consequences--when
presently, in low and gentle tones, he began to speak to those about him
of the free and glorious Christian faith, which in all ways was more
excellent than the cruel idolatry in which they were bound. Naturally,
he was not permitted long to speak in this strain, for the barge-master
speedily ordered him in most peremptory tones to keep silence; which
order doubtless would have been still more quickly given had not the
officer been fairly surprised by Fray Antonio's temerity into momentary
forgetfulness of the dangerous outcome of this gentle talk. And Fray
Antonio, knowing the value of the word in season that is dropped to
fructify in soil ready for it, did not attempt argument with the
barge-master--by which the thoughts of those who listened would have
been divert