Now I bowed my head and returned thanks for my escape; then, lifting it, I looked my preserver in the face and said:
“I swear by the name of God, señor, that He never made a man nobler than yourself!”
The next instant I fell forward and fainted there among the ferns.
* * * * * * *
Ten days had passed since I was carried from the mouth of that accursed mine back to Cumarvo in a litter, and during all this time I had suffered much pain in my back, and been very ill—so ill, indeed, that I was scarcely allowed to speak with anyone. Now, however, I was much better, and one afternoon the Señor Strickland, assisted by my foster-brother Molas, lifted me from my bed into a hammock.
“By the way, Ignatio,” said the señor when Molas had gone, “I never gave you back this charm of yours. What a strange trinket it is!” he added, taking it from his neck; “and what did you mean by your talk in the tunnel about its making me heir to the empire of the Aztecs in the heart of every Indian, and the rest of it? I suppose that you were delirious with pain, and did not know what you were saying.”
“Is the door shut, señor?” I asked; “and are you sure that there is no one on the verandah? Good! Then draw your chair nearer and I will tell you something. I am not certain that I should take this talisman back again, still I will do so for reasons which you shall learn presently.
“Know, señor, that this broken gem is at once the foundation-stone and the secret symbol of a great order, of which, although you have not been initiated into it, you are now one of the lords, seeing that the crowning and vital ceremony of the creation of a Lord of the Heart consists in the hanging of the symbol about his neck for the space of a minute only by myself, who am the chief lord and Keeper of the Heart for life, and you have worn it for ten whole days.
“Before we part I will call a chapter of the order—for even among these mountains we have brethren—and you shall be initiated into its ritual and raised to the rank of a chief lord, as is your right. Meanwhile I will instruct you briefly in its mysteries, as it is my bounden duty to do.
“Understand, señor, that the first duty of the servant of the Heart is silence, and that silence I demand of you. Men have died ere now, señor; yes, they have died on the rack in the dungeons of the Inquisition, and shrivelled as wizards in the fires of the stake, sooner than reveal those things that have been told them upon the faith of the Heart, against which the confessional itself cannot prevail—no, not with the best of Catholics.”