Free trader-journal. (Ottawa, Ill.) 1916-1920, 1918-05-28

borne had met him in the hall the
detective was the only one who dld
not know him by name. Dual" be-
gan, "this is Hetty. the hotel detect
i've"
mighty glad to know you, SIR
Heffv ducked his head, and half raised
hand from habit. in salute. You
mean the whole business hangs on
this here idol I've been hearing
about?'
Exactly"
Dual unfolded his napkin and
spread il across a knee, as the waiter
slid up. Bring me some fruit. cup
of cocoa, and u pitcher of milk, with
some bread, cut thin" he directed and
came back to his theme.
From all accounts it was a most
peculiar and interesting object. one
is led to believe that we today do
not give anything like due credit TO
the skill possessed by the ancients,
though AS explorations so on We find
more and more proof that they were
in reality engineers and artificers OF
no small degree of achievement.
Egypt and Babylon have yielded
up a mass of very interesting data. In
America the ruins of Palenque show
it TO have been an immense city, the
- hnE n
temples and public structures of a
magnificence undreamed OF among us
of today 1t was accurately laid out
four SQUARE, with a mathematical pre-
cision which eXcites ones wonder
and admiration.
"The Spanish conquistadores found
among the Aztecs so many beliefs of
religion similar to their own that they
alleged the devil had given them Il
parody of the Christian doctrines, in
order to confound the priests of the
Mother Church. Their rites of mar
rage were sacred and holy; they
baptized their new born, and said
masses for their dead: they had a
sisterhood of nuns, who gave their
lives to the service of mankind and
the gods; their judiciary was in some
respects more fair than ours of the
day, and was divided into district
courts and supreme courts, with the
right o. appeal from the lower deci'
sion to the higher.
"The rudimentary forms of our
own present alphabet are carved on
the Maya temples now in ruins, and
this image of which have spoken was
made by some artisan of that ancient
race which was overthrown by the in
vading whites. From the description
given by MIR. Dayton 1t was very SIM
liar to images recently found in
Egyptian tombs.
"And we must not forget that a
section Of this continent where il was
created are literal descendants Of the
nation which worshiped il once, de-
spite the years Of slavery and subiec.
ton to the whites they have under
gone. In way there is pathos in
it all. They were so grand people
In the Western eyes.
Then came the white and disaster
IN short time they were vanQuished,
theU temples desecrated and robbed,
their gods o'erthrown. their lands,
their cities wrested from them; yet
clinging fanatically to a belief in a
means. 1t must have been a faith truly
fanatic which urged some body of
priesthood to transport this little IMAGE
and the emerald temple jewel through
all the miles from there to here and
set up its altar in the ruins of cliff
house in the mountains to the north.
Such a faith Is sublime, Could it be
rekindled in the descendants of those
people, it might work the miracle they
have about forgotten to even dream
or"
II struck me as rather odd sort
VI speech Al SUCH lllh', anu cuuiu
see by the faces OF my companions
that they shared my feelings in the
matter.
Just at first when | had heard his
soft, assured tones my heart had
leaped with the thought that now at
last the master hand had arrived and
things would begin to move. Even his
words had foreshadowed a certain
knowledge which seemed to me to say
that his calculations alone in our
rooms had borne fruit.
Yet starting from the assertion he
had first made he had run off into a
dissertation on the ancient nations Of
the earth. both Eastern and Western,
which, while proving the image of
Quetzal to be an object of interest TO
the antiquarian, did not SO far as
could see, serve to throw any light
upon its present probable whereabouts
or that of Its accompanying gem.