In another instant the panting Noco, grumbling but overawed, had left the hut upon a mission for which she had no hungry heart.
De Sancerre drew back from the entrance, and dropped limply upon a bench. He had put into operation a hastily-formed plan with an impetuosity which, in its rebound, left him faint and dazed. Suddenly a warm pressure upon his cold hands aroused him from his momentary submission to this enervating reaction. Looking down, he saw that Katonah was gazing up at him with sympathetic apprehension.
“I have placed you in great danger by my return!” she exclaimed. “I am going now. I will not come back.”
She had arisen and was about to leave the hut. Seizing her hand, de Sancerre drew her to his side.
“No, ma petite! You are not at fault! Don’t leave me—but do not speak! I must think—I must think! But my mind’s in a whirl. Courage, Katonah! There, do not tremble so! Ma foi, little one, ’tis a hard nut we have to crack! There, do not move! Let me take your hand. Bien! Now, let me think!”
Silence, intense, unbroken, reigned within the hut; while, outside, the hot sun beat down upon a city in which rumor itself had become voiceless in growing dread of a fatal word.
CHAPTER XIX
IN WHICH COHEYOGO EXHIBITS HIS CRAFTINESS
While the Great Sun, by virtue of his divine origin, was technically the high-priest of the nation, it had come about, at the time of Count Louis de Sancerre’s sojourn among the sun-worshippers, that the chief of the holy men, upon whom devolved the duty of keeping alive the sacred fire, had, by the strength of his bigoted personality, usurped all religious authority and had made the temple independent of, and more potent than, the royal cabin. While the chief priest had never openly defied the Great Sun, he had, nevertheless, gradually become the most influential personage in the nation.
It was the advent of Coyocop which had given to Coheyogo, the chief priest, an opportunity for making himself, with no visible break between the church and state, practically omnipotent in the City of the Sun.
Just how thoroughly Coheyogo believed that Julia de Aquilar was the very incarnation of the sun-spirit which, tradition had assured his people, would come to them from the shore of a distant sea, it is impossible to say. It is a fact, however, that from the moment of her arrival among the sun-worshippers the chief priest had openly accepted the maiden as a supernatural guest from whom emanated an authority which he and his fellow-priests were in duty bound to obey. For the furtherance of his own ends and the increase of his own power, the crafty Coheyogo could have taken no better course.