"Whom do you mean?" Doña Laura asked quickly. "Don Miguel?"
"He will come?" the maidens exclaimed, simultaneously.
"This evening, I promise you."
The girls threw themselves into each other's arms to hide their blushes and confusion. The hunter, after admiring the graceful group for a moment, went out, saying in a soft and sympathetic voice,—"This evening."
The Amantzin and Atoyac were impatiently awaiting the result of the visit in the vestibule of the palace. When the hunter joined them, and the High Priest began questioning him as to the condition of the patients, he seemed to reflect for a moment, then answered in a grave voice—"My father is a wise man; nothing equals his knowledge; his heart can repose, for his captives will soon be delivered from the evil spirit that possesses them."
"My father speaks the truth?" the Amantzin asked, trying to read in the medicine man's face the degree of credit he should give him.
But the latter was impenetrable. "Listen," he answered, "to what the Great Spirit revealed to me during the night; at this moment a Tlacateotzin from a remote hut has arrived at the city; I do not know him, I never heard his name before this day; it is this divine man who must aid us in saving the sick maidens. He alone knows what remedies must be administered to them."
"Still," the High Priest said, with an accent of ill-boded suspicion, "my father has given us proofs of his immense learning, why does he not finish alone what he has so well begun?"
"I am a simple man, whose strength resides in the protection the Wacondah grants me. He has revealed to me the means to restore health to the sufferers; I must obey."
The High Priest bowed submissively, and requested the hunter to confide to him what he proposed doing.