For aught I know, indeed Kamaiakan may be an original priest of Montezuma's; no one knows his age, but he does not look an hour older, to-day, than when I first saw him, over twenty years ago." "He must be!" said Miriam, with some positiveness.

"He has told me of seeing and doing things hundreds of years ago.

And he says----" She paused.
"What does he say, Nina adorada ?" asked her father.
"It was about the treasure, you know." "Let us hear.

The professor is one of us." "It's one of our traditions that my mother's ancestors, at the time of Cortez, were very rich people," continued Miriam, glancing at Meschines, and then letting her eyes wander across the garden, blooming with roses and fragrant with orange-trees, and so across the trellised vines towards the soft outline of the mountains eastward.

"A great part of their wealth was in the form of jewels and precious stones.