The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-08-08

for gaming and drinking as well as for eating. A nobleman could ruin him. self there easily and luxuriously.
 And the lord of that fair and populous city, the master of that powerful empire, watched alone upon the tower of Chapul
 tepec the coming of the day-watched for a sign for the sun. Rumors had come to the city, nay even courtiers of royal em- ploy, telling of a strange people who had landed upon the coast from huge canoes blown over the waters by clouds. They were lighter of complexion than the Aztecs; they had with them strange beasts, they had strange engines which spoke with fire and carried death in their speech. One of the strangers had long yellow beard, hair of yellow and face winter than any man had before seen. "Quetzal," said Mualox, the Fair God, had come to his own again. The strang- CTS come from the sun; they cannot be withstood. O Kingl Have you not read here upon the wall the fall of your em- pire? It is the god who comes" But the heart of Montezuma was still stout in his breast though he was so far con-
 
 of vacillation was attributable to the prophecy of Mualox.
 He had spent the night walking be- heath those great cypress trees of i'm memorable age which crown the royal hill, alone with his thoughts, his doubts, his fears, his courage. Now from the tower the king saw a sudden beam glow upon the loftiest peak of the eastern Sierras; the sky of morning flushed; peak after peak caught the growing fire, and from behind the mountain battlement slowly rose the glowing, golden disc of the sun. But just at that minute, from the volcano of Popocatepeti, came cloud of smoke which, before the orb of day, had fairly succeeded in pouring its benign rays down upon the valley, hoated across the luminary and made it's light weird and dreary, a foredooming gloom. The king groaned; the omen was against him and his nation.
 From that time on the couriers and the rumors which spake of the strangers came thick and fast They had pene- trated to Tlascala, had vanquished the hardy mountaineers In battle and made them their allies The strangers were but handful-a few hundred-what had mighty empirs to fear from them? But one man saw in the Spaniards no gods but men brave and covetous of gold. The 'tzin Guatamo, or, as he was generally called, Guatamozin, nephew of the emperor, realized the peril with whio their coming threatened the nation. He had visited in disguise the camp of the Spaniards before they had crossed the mountains. He knew that their fire arms, their horses, their armor and their dauntless courage, coupled with the phophecy of the coming of the Fair God with which all the empire now rang, would give them an advantage which might enable them, few as they were. to seize upon an empire In which they would otherkwise have been as sand of the shore to be swallowed up by waves. Then he saw the policy which actuated the leader of this band of adventurers, the policy which sought to draw away from their allegiance all such subject tribes as were dissatisfied with the harsh rule of the Aztec emperors; those who were weary of the continual tale of vic tins which were required from their provinces to feed the fires of the war god at the capital. Strike at once and strike hard was the advice of Guatamozin.
 The night after the royal lord of Anahuac had seen the sun rise in an- ger and evil omen his two fair daugh- ters, reclining in hammocks stretched in one of the many floating gardens of the lake, discussed the news con- corning the invaders-and their own love affairs. "Oh," cried the Princess Tula, that our father would harken