But enough of this question of conscience.

When de Garcia was gone into the pit, I turned my steps homewards, or rather towards the ruined city which I could see beneath me, for I had no home left.  Now I must descend the ice cap, and this I found less easy than climbing it had been, for, my vengeance being accomplished, I became as other men are, and a sad and weary one at that, so sad indeed that I should not have sorrowed greatly if I had made a false step upon the ice.

But I made none, and at length I came to the snow where the travelling was easy.  My oath was fulfilled and my vengeance was accomplished, but as I went I reckoned up the cost.  I had lost my betrothed, the love of my youth; for twenty years I had lived a savage chief among savages and made acquaintance with every hardship, wedded to a woman who, although she loved me dearly, and did not lack nobility of mind, as she had shown the other day, was still at heart a savage or, at the least, a thrall of demon gods.  The tribe that I ruled was conquered, the beautiful city where I dwelt was a ruin, I was homeless and a beggar, and my fortune would be great if in the issue I escaped death or slavery.  All this I could have borne, for I had borne the like before, but the cruel end of my last surviving son, the one true joy of my desolate life, I could not bear.  The love of those children had become the passion of my middle age, and as I loved them so they had loved me.  I had trained them from babyhood till their hearts were English and not Aztec, as were their speech and faith, and thus they were not only my dear children, but companions of my own race, the only ones I had.  And now by accident, by sickness, and by the sword, they were dead the three of them, and I was desolate.

Ah! we think much of the sorrows of our youth, and should a sweetheart give us the go by we fill the world with moans and swear that it holds no comfort for us.  But when we bend our heads before the shrouded shape of some lost child, then it is that for the first time we learn how terrible grief can be.  Time, they tell us, will bring consolation, but it is false, for such sorrows time has no salves—­I say it who am old—­as they are so they shall be.  There is no hope but faith, there is no comfort save in the truth that love which might have withered on the earth grows fastest in the tomb, to flower gloriously in heaven; that no love indeed can be perfect till God sanctifies and completes it with His seal of death.

I threw myself down there upon the desolate snows of Xaca, that none had trod before, and wept such tears as a man may weep but once in his life days.

’O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!’ I cried with the ancient king—­I whose grief was greater than his, for had I not lost three sons within as many years?  Then remembering that as this king had gone to join his son long centuries ago, so I must one day go to join mine, and taking such comfort from the thought as may be found in it, I rose and crept back to the ruined City of Pines.