treat you with reverence as an equal or more. Every delight shall
be yours except that of marriage, and this will be withheld till the
twelfth month of the year. Then the four most beautiful maidens in the
land will be given to you as brides.'

'And who will choose them?' I asked.

'Nay, I know not, Teule, who do not meddle in such mysteries,' she
answered hurriedly. 'Sometimes the god is judge and sometimes the
priests judge for him. It is as it may chance. Listen now to the end of
my tale and you will surely forget the rest. For one month you will live
with your wives, and this month you will pass in feasting at all the
noblest houses in the city. On the last day of the month, however, you
will be placed in a royal barge and together with your wives, paddled
across the lake to a place that is named "Melting of Metals." Thence you
will be led to the teocalli named "House of Weapons," where your wives
will bid farewell to you for ever, and there, Teule, alas! that I must
say it, you are doomed to be offered as a sacrifice to the god whose
spirit you hold, the great god Tezcat, for your heart will be torn from
your body, and your head will be struck from your shoulders and set upon
the stake that is known as "post of heads."'

Now when I heard this dreadful doom I groaned aloud and my knees
trembled so that I almost fell to the ground. Then a great fury seized
me and, forgetting my father's counsel, I blasphemed the gods of that
country and the people who worshipped them, first in the Aztec and Maya
languages, then when my knowledge of these tongues failed me, in Spanish
and good English. But Otomie, who heard some of my words and guessed
more, was seized with fear and lifted her hands, saying:

'Curse not the awful gods, I beseech you, lest some terrible thing
befall you at once. If you are overheard it will be thought that you
have an evil spirit and not a good one, and then you must die now and by
torment. At the least the gods, who are everywhere, will hear you.'

'Let them hear,' I answered. 'They are false gods and that country
is accursed which worships them. They are doomed I say, and all their
worshippers are doomed. Nay, I care not if I am heard--as well die now
by torment as live a year in the torment of approaching death. But I
shall not die alone, all the sea of blood that your priests have shed
cries out for vengeance to the true God, and He will avenge.'

Thus I raved on, being mad with fear and impot