In the meantime the wise men had given Mexi a cup of chocolate, not in a thin liquid like we know it, but thick like a cold custard, and with whipped goat's cream on top.
"THE HUMMING-BIRD ALIGHTED ON HIS FINGER"
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"Thou art kind," he said growing weaker and more faint all the time, "to try to prolong a life already spent." Turning his eyes toward the Golden Hearted he continued: "Lying next my heart thou wilt find a bundle of mystery. Carry it without opening until the time of thy departure from this strange land is at hand. Open then and thou wilt find directions for thy special work."
He did not speak again and when they tried to rouse him there was a smile of infinite peace on his face, but nothing save the lifeless body was before them. The gentle, sweet spirit of the old man had gone back to God.
"We will neither weep nor mourn for him," said the wise men to the Golden Hearted. "It would not be his wish, and we will show our love by obeying him."
And so they left him sleeping in a dell of ferns and mosses, in sight of Anahuac, the land by the side of water, as its name indicates, and continued their journey southward.
On the way the wise men found a little creature, looking like a black currant with neither head, legs nor tail, so far as they could see. It is fat and dark and round, but if you squeeze him his blood is a brighter color than currant juice, and much more valuable because we get cochineal red of one, and currant jelly from the other. It was in the valley of Anahuac that the cochineal bug was first found, and it lives on the leaves of the prickly pear, or tuna cactus—the common kind with leaves shaped like a ham, and covered with long sharp needles.
The young cochineal bugs are so stupid that they must be tied on the leaves of the prickly pear to keep them from falling off and starving. In this way, too, they keep dry and warm in winter, but as soon as they are grown they are ruthlessly shaken to death and dried in the sun. Then the queer, shriveled dead bugs are put up in bags and sold.