‘Where can we go to, Otomie?  We are birds without a nest.’

’We must seek shelter in the City of Pines, or fly across the water; there is no other choice, husband.’

’We cannot try the sea, Otomie, for all the ships that come here are Spanish, and I do not know how they will greet us in the City of Pines now that our cause is lost, and with it so many thousands of their warriors.’

’We must take the risk, husband.  There are still true hearts in Anahuac, who will stand by us in our sorrow and their own.  At the least we have escaped from greater dangers.  Now let me dress your wounds and rest awhile.’

So for three more days I lay in the cave of the mountains and Otomie tended me, and at the end of that time my state was such that I could travel in a litter, though for some weeks I was unable to set foot to the ground.  On the fourth day we started by night, and I was carried on men’s shoulders till at length we passed up the gorge that leads to the City of Pines.  Here we were stopped by sentries to whom Otomie told our tale, bidding some of them go forward and repeat it to the captains of the city.  We followed the messengers slowly, for my bearers were weary, and came to the gates of the beautiful town just as the red rays of sunset struck upon the snowy pinnacle of Xaca that towers behind it, turning her cap of smoke to a sullen red, like that of molten iron.

The news of our coming had spread about, and here and there knots of people were gathered to watch us pass.  For the most part they stood silent, but now and again some woman whose husband or son had perished in the siege, would hiss a curse at us.

Alas! how different was our state this day to what it had been when not a year before we entered the City of Pines for the first time.  Then we were escorted by an army ten thousand strong, then musicians had sung before us and our path was strewn with flowers.  And now!  Now we came two fugitives from the vengeance of the Teules, I borne in a litter by four tired soldiers, while Otomie, the princess of this people, still clad in her wanton’s robe, at which the women mocked, for she had been able to come by no other, tramped at my side, since there were none to carry her, and the inhabitants of the place cursed us as the authors of their woes.  Nor did we know if they would stop at words.

At length we crossed the square beneath the shadow of the teocalli, and reached the ancient and sculptured palace as the light failed, and the smoke on Xaca, the holy hill, began to glow with the fire in its heart.  Here small preparation had been made to receive us, and that night we supped by the light of a torch upon tortillas or meal cakes and water, like the humblest in the land.  Then we crept to our rest, and as I lay awake because of the pain of my hurts, I heard Otomie, who thought that I slept, break into low sobbing at my side.  Her proud spirit was humbled at last, and she, whom I had never known to weep except once, when our firstborn died in the siege, wept bitterly.