to line."

"My Lord Tatho," I said, "it is clear to me that you and I
have grown to be of different tastes. All of the hoard that I have
made for myself in this colony, few men would covet. I have the
poor clothes you see me in this moment, and a box of drugs such as
I have found useful to the stomach. I possess also three slaves,
two of them scribes and the third a sturdy savage from Europe, who
cooks my victual and fills for me the bath. For my maintenance
during my years of service, here, I have bled the State of a
soldier's ration and nothing beyond; and if in my name any man has
mulcted a creature in Yucatan of so much as an ounce of bronze, I
request you as a last service to have that man hanged for me as a
liar and a thief."

Tatho looked at me curiously. "I do not know whether I admire
you most or whether I pity. I do not know whether to be astonished
or to despise. We had heard of much of your uprightness over
yonder in Atlantis, of your sternness and your justice, but I swear
by the old Gods that no soul guessed you carried your fancy so far
as this. Why, man, money is power. With money and the resources
money can buy, nothing could stop a fellow like you; whilst without
it you may be tripped up and trodden down irrevocably at the first
puny reverse."

"The Gods will choose my fate."

"Possibly; but for mine, I prefer to nourish it myself. I
tell you with frankness that I have not come here to follow in the
pattern you have made for a vice-royalty. I shall govern Yucatan