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“Listen, Ignatio, my son, you are a rich man; how rich I cannot tell you, but for many generations your forefathers have hidden up treasure for an object which I must explain, and the gold will be handed over to you by those of your clan in whose keeping it is. It was because of this treasure that your father and your great-grandfather were done to death with many others, since the rumour of it came to the ears of those that ruled in Mexico, who, when they failed to force its secret from them, tormented and killed them in their rage.

“Now, this was the message of your father to you concerning the wealth which he and his ancestors had hidden:

“‘Tell my son, Ignatio, should he live to grow up, that there has never departed from our family the desire to win back the crown that Guatemoc lost, or at least to drive out the accursed Spaniards and their spawn, and to establish an Indian Republic. To this end we have heaped up wealth for generations, that it might serve us when the hour was ripe; and because of this wealth, of which the whisper could not altogether be hid in a land which is full of spies, some of us have come to cruel deaths, as I am about to do to-night.