Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/248

220 was dying; and he married them after the old custom of the Aztecs, with the chachihuitlchalchihuitl [sic] stone and a bird feather, while they sat on a woven mat with the corners of their garments tied together—the young Spaniard and the little girl, who was four years old. Afterwards her father died, and that night the Spaniard all alone buried him: and when toward morning he came back he found only a few Indians too old to travel. The others, frightened of the mad dead man, had gone, taking the little girl with them.

"What does Iris do when she hears that?" asked Trant.

"It begins to revive memories in Iris," the voice answered quickly; "but she says bravely, 'What is that to me? Why do you tell me about it?' 'Because,' says Canonigo Penol, 'I have the chalchihuitl stone which bears witness to this marriage!' And as he holds it to her and it flashes in the sun, just as it did when they held it before her when her clothes were tied to his on the mat, she remembers and knows that it is so; and that she is married to this man! By the flash of the chalchihuitl stone in the sun she remembers and she knows that the rest is true!"

"And then?" Trant pressed.

"She is filled with horror. She shrinks from Canonigo. She puts her hands to her face, because she loved Dr. Pierce with her whole heart—"

"O God!" cried Pierce.

"She cries out that it is not so, though she knows it is the truth. She dashes the stone from his hand and pushes Canonigo from her. He is unable to find the stone; and seeing the sculptured gods and the