MY acquaintance with Doxley Seymour — a casual acquaintance, cultivated during a month's idle tossing on the broad waters of the Atlantic in the staunch brig Pocahontas — bade fair, I would fain believe, to ripen into a lifelong friendship. Gazing back through the long shadowy avenue of life's wanderings, I cannot descry any face that greets me so kindly, any face at once so honest and cheery and heartily friendly, as that of this young Englishman of twenty-seven, ten years my junior, who grasped my hand for the first time when I boarded the Pocahontas in Kingston harbour in the fair island of Jamaica. There were many points of sympathy between us; many tastes and habits we shared together; many similarities of fortune in our comparative friendliness, in the long exile which had separated us both from home and family; many bonds of common interest and fellow-feeling, which each succeeding day's intercourse served to strengthen and make firmer. But it was my fellow-traveller's intrinsic character, his almost boyish frankness and enthusiasm, his constant good-humour and geniality, which seemed destined to warm a month's pleasant companionship into a lifelong regard. How that seeming destiny was interrupted, how that intimacy came to be a mere tender memory, this story shall tell.

      Having embarked at Vera Cruz — at that time the only passenger by the trading-brig — Doxley Seymour had already made himself popular on board at the time when I joined the ship. He was gifted with a pleasing bass voice of good quality, as well as considerable skill in its use; and hardly an evening passed that did not find him seated astraddle of the after-hatch, trolling out some rollicking sea-song to an appreciative audience of the brig's hands. Nor was this, as I discovered later, by any means the chief among his accomplishments. Doxley Seymour was an artist of no mean order.

      I made the discovery one sweltering midday, when we were some five days out of Jamaica on the homeward voyage. I was creeping along the deck, seeking some welcome patch of shade, when I came upon the tall form of Doxley Seymour seated in the shadow of the deck-house, with his long legs drawn up before him. A small-sized canvas was supported against his knees, and he was busily occupied with his brushes. So busily occupied was he, indeed, that he did not appear to be conscious of my approach; and when he replied to my exclamation of surprise, it was with a startled air of interruption from intense abstraction. He muttered a few vague words of disparagement in answer to my praises, and then returned to his task — a portrait — with an evident desire to escape conversation.

      Some days elapsed before the painting was completed to his satisfaction; and by this time my curiosity with regard to it had reached a very high pitch. It was not alone that the portrait in itself was strikingly remarkable; the unremitting persistence with which, it was evident, he sought to reproduce from memory the lineaments of some well-remembered face, his absorption in the task, and above all his obvious reticence and mystery about it, all served to arouse my interest in the matter.

      In vain I rallied him, as the picture progressed, upon the subject of its mysterious original. Nothing was of avail to break down his impenetrable reserve.

      "My dear fellow," he would say very solemnly, fixing his great brown eyes pathetically upon my face, "it's no use, really! It would be no end of a long story to tell you who this lady is, and where I met her, and how I parted from her; and when the story was told, you would never believe it. It is only a whim of mine, to commemorate a certain incident while it is still fresh in my memory; and I don't want to chatter about it to anybody." An answer which threw me back with increased interest upon the consideration of the portrait itself.

      I have it quite clearly before my eyes as I write. A woman's face, dusky and sad, but of a perfect outline, the features small and regular, the lips full and nobly curved, the hair black and glossy as a raven's wing, looped in fantastic folds about her ears — gazing intently, sorrowfully almost, out of a vague and shadowy background of sombre green; gazing — such was the painter's art — with all the changing light of life in the great deep-black eyes, with all the highly-wrought intensity of consciousness reflected in the broad forehead and the half-parted lips. It was indeed a remarkable portrait — remarkable in its execution; remarkable, magnetic almost, in the strange character of the face that it depicted.

      But the interest, at least from my point of view, was not confined to the face alone. The ornaments with which the figure was decked — represented, as was evident, with no less minuteness and accuracy of remembrance than the likeness itself — were full of striking significance. The maiden was undoubtedly Indian, and the ornaments were of Indian workmanship; but my acquaintance with the aborigines of Mexico and Central America, fairly extensive as it was, had never revealed to me any native trinkets of such richness or such apparent fertility of symbolism as those which were here represented. Foremost among them to arrest the attention was the spirally-coiled serpent which formed the maiden's head-dress. With wide flat coils, between each of which her dusky skin was visible, it covered her forehead almost to the eyebrows and fitted upon the crown of her head like a cap, speech, was taking an evening airing. To my inquiry if Mr Seymour lodged there she mumbled an affirmative; and adding querulously, "You'll find 'im upstairs, mister!" vanished abruptly into the darkness of the passage.

      I groped my way up the staircase, and knocked at the door of the room which she had seemed to indicate. It was a somewhat barely-furnished sitting-room of the ordinary second-rate lodging-house pattern, engrafted, as it were, with a strong nautical strain in the subject-matter of the pictures and the frowsiness of the cabin-like smell. Doxley Seymour was seated reading before a comfortable fire, for the early autumn evenings were already chilly, and the warmth of the tropics was still dear to us; and hung over the centre of the mantelpiece, framed in a massive and handsome frame, was the mysterious portrait of the Indian maiden.

      Seymour greeted me heartily, and laughed over the account of my encounter with his landlady; but he seemed — so I thought — rather nervous and ill at ease. Presently, after some minutes' conversation upon indifferent topics — the first impressions of our return to the old country, the changes that a few years had brought, and so on — he asked abruptly:

      "You have never by any chance taken up the subject of Aztec picture-writing, I suppose?"

      I replied in the negative, adding that I believed the opportunities for its study were scarce and difficult of access; and after a minute's thoughtful deliberation he went on:

      "I have a scroll here that I am very anxious to decipher, if only I could come across the fellow who could help me with it, or put me on the right track. I am abnormally inquisitive about it. It conveys nothing to you, eh?

      He raised his arm to the mantelpiece and drew forth something which he placed in my hands. It was a small oblong scrap of some substance like parchment, very glossy, and of a yellowish-brown colour. Two thongs of twisted grass or bark, each about a foot in length, were attached to the ends of the strip of parchment, which measured perhaps some four inches by two. The parchment itself was covered thickly upon one side with minute characters, each of them distinct and delicately tinted in various colours. I examined it closely, holding it in the firelight; and gradually I made out the figures of many animals, drawn with some correctness; human faces, too, and serpents, and a number of strange designs whose significance I was unable even to guess at-all jumbled together, apparently, in the most incomprehensible confusion on the narrow scroll. The object was no doubt of considerable interest as a curiosity, and I pored over it for some time before returning it to Doxley Seymour.

      "I am afraid I can't make much out of it, Seymour, old man," I said, with a laugh. "Have you any sort of notion what it is all about?"

      He appeared to meditate for some moments before answering me.

      "I don't know why I shouldn't tell you," he laughed at length. "No doubt it will appear incredible to you, and you will only have my word for its truth; but you shall hear for yourself. You were very curious, I remember, about the identity of that portrait there," nodding his head towards the mantelpiece. "Well, that portrait and this Aztec scroll are very closely connected; so closely, indeed, that the same tale will tell you all I know about each of them. Fill up your glass, old fellow."

      He placed a bottle and some glasses on the table at my elbow, lit the gas, and went back to his place by the fireside. Then, after a minute's deliberation, he spoke again, fixing his eyes on the changing flames as they danced and flickered in the grate.

      "You already know," he began, the life that I have been leading ever since I left college. It has exercised a fascination over me which will never, I believe, suffer me to settle down to any career of permanence or respectability; but that is by the way. For six years now I have been a sojourner in every quarter of the globe, and I have met with my fair share of adventures in one way and another, but never with an adventure so marvellous or so grave as the one I encountered just six months ago. Previous to that I had been spending some time in Mexico, studying the Toltec and Aztec remains, with a view to their comparison with the antiquities of Egypt — a work which I may yet, I hope, bring to a conclusion; and while in the interior, not far from Puebla, I got wind of the remains of an ancient temple, reported to be in a remarkable state of preservation, some thirty miles distant. It was not one of the well-known antiquities; but the reports which I received were so encouraging that I determined to pay it a visit. Unfortunately I went alone. The ruin proved to be one of the ordinary pyramidal teocullis, of small size, but (as I had been told) in rare condition, and remarkably free from vegetation or overgrowth. Indeed, I remember it struck me at the time, considering the denseness of the growth which surrounded it on all sides, that the slopes of the teocalli must have been kept clear by the hand of man. The steps at one of its angles were still, too, in fairly good order; and I was able to ascend to the summit without much trouble. spent some time in examining the ruins; and then, as the sun was almost at its noonday strength and my ride back to the nearest village (where I had left my traps) was but a short one, I crept into one of the crumbling turrets which were still standing on the summit of the pile, and determined to get a couple of hours' sleep."

      Doxley Seymour stirred the fire vigorously. "This is where the strange part of it begins," he said nervously, glancing at me for the first time. "I must have slept longer than I intended, for when I came to myself the sun had gone round behind the turret, and the interior was almost dark. I tried to get up from the ground, and found that my feet were bound together at the ankles. A band of twisted fibre was passed also round my body, pinning my arms; so that, literally speaking, I could not move hand or foot. I had evidently been caught in a trap. In a moment or two, as my senses began to come back to me, I saw an old Indian squatting in the corner of the turret watching me. I speak advisedly when I say that he was the most villainous-looking object that my eyes have ever rested on; and yet there was a certain air of authority, of exalted triumph, about him, which made me feel that I had not fallen into the hands of any ordinary native cut-throat. Of course I started upon him at once, demanding my instant release, and threatening him with all manner of penalties for detaining me; but his only recognition of my speech was to shuffle to the entrance of the turret and call some name shrilly two or three times in succession.

      "And that brings me to the portrait.

      "In answer to his cries a girl appeared — that girl whom I have tried to paint from memory. I don't say, mind, that the portrait is a fair one; far from it. It can give you no notion of her grace, her carriage, her softness of voice; my poor skill is useless to express her play of feature, the charm ——   Excuse me, my dear fellow," Seymour broke off, with a short, unsteady laugh; "you can't be expected to enter into all that, of course; but you can see how the land lies. I tell you frankly I confess it without shame — I was in love with that girl, and I would have made her my wife."

      He threw out the words defiantly, as a sort of challenge, but I did not respond to it. Ridiculous, repugnant, in a manner, as was the idea of a cultivated Englishman talking gravely of having conceived an attachment to an unknown native woman — especially under such circumstances of suspicion as Seymour's narrative seemed to hint at — yet the portrait did undoubtedly offer some explanation, even some palliation, of the absurdity. It was a portrait, in the first place, of a woman of undeniably great beauty, and possibly great attractiveness; moreover, the countenance bore traces of a much higher degree of intellect and mental refinement than was usual among the Indians; and there was a subtle air of power, a sort of spiritual fascination, in the whole presentment, as it appeared on the canvas, which was most striking. Therefore I held my peace, merely nodding affirmatively; and Doxley Seymour proceeded somewhat more temperately:

      "Of course, in saying that I am anticipating matters considerably. At the time when I first saw Cioaçalco — that was her name — I was conscious only of a sensation of wonder and, perhaps, of admiration, which almost prevailed over my natural resentment. She was wearing the ornaments which you see depicted there and which so aroused your curiosity, by-the-bye, my friend — and was dressed, as you see her, in a long white robe, beautifully embroidered. It was the costume of her order — so I learnt afterwards — and of great antiquity; but that is by the way. When she appeared within the turret she stood apart at first for some minutes in conversation with the old Indian, and then she approached me, speaking in very fair Spanish. And what think you, with the utmost simplicity and unconcern, she told me? That at this remote and solitary teocalli the heathen worship of her fathers, the Aztecs, was still, in closest secrecy, carried on; that she and the old Indian, her father, were the appointed priests of its sacred rites; and that I, a wayfarer whom the gods themselves had surely designated, was destined to be reserved till the next annual festival as a victim to one of their infernal deities!

      "It was a cheerful prospect, wasn't it? And I lay under it for several weeks. During the whole of that time I was confined in the turret, without chance of escape; not, indeed, bound hand and foot, as I had been at first, but attached by the twisted thong around my body to a solid ring embedded in the stonework of the floor. At first I had hopes of a speedy rescue; but as the days wore on and no help came, it dawned upon me that my absence must have passed unnoticed, or that the search for me, if any had been made, must have been abandoned as fruitless. But a gleam of light and hope was still left to me. I was regularly supplied with food — good enough of its kind — and always by the Indian maid Cioaçalco. Her father I saw little of; though he came for a short time each day to gloat over my condition. But with Cioaçalco it was different. Our conversations — for which the recurrence of every meal gave opportunity — became daily more prolonged and more intimate. Almost from the beginning, I believe, she felt pity for me. She did, indeed, at first — sublime enthusiast as she was — attempt to impress upon me that no fate could be more blessed than mine, or attended with more pleasant prospects in the after-world. But presently — don't think I want to boast; I say it with no vanity, God knows — another feeling came to take the place of sympathy; and then her convictions wavered. How hard a fight it was for the poor girl no one can ever know, for the superstitions of her creed were bound fast around her very nature like iron bands, clamped and shrunken upon her by ignorance and fear. But nature got the better of superstition for a time at any rate. I don't want to dwell upon that part of my story. It is enough to tell you that there came a night at last when Cioaçalco cut through my bonds with her own hands, and I was free."

      He was silent for some moments, apparently buried in thought, and then with an effort he proceeded:

      Our plans were formed. Cioaçalco was to accompany me, to be baptised, to become my wife as soon as opportunity offered. Everything was arranged for — save Fate. It was a brilliantly-moonlit night; so much the better for our flight through the forest. In death-like silence we crept out of the turret and across the flat summit of the teocalli. Seventy feet below us the forest slept. The teocalli was built in three stages, connected with each other by broken flights of steps, steep and irregular. We had already made our way down the two first flights, and were crossing the platform of the lowest stage towards the head of the last flight of steps, when a slight noise above us made us turn our heads. There, on the topmost verge of the ruin, black and sharp against the moon's disc as it peeped over the crumbling edge, stood the figure of the old Indian, black-robed and threatening. His gaunt arms were flung above his head; his long, wild hair fluttered in the wind; and, in a tongue unknown to me, he uttered some words that rang shrilly through the night air. In that instant I felt a shiver pass through Cioaçalco's arm; she shrank away from my side; a dull, dazed look took the place of the momentary terror that had leapt into her eyes. A second later the dazed look passed away; she pushed out her arms as if to keep me from her; and then, with a shuddering cry, she turned and sped back up the crumbling steps of the teocalli.

      "What I did then I will not attempt to reconcile either with good sense or, perhaps, with honour. I simply ran away. I dared not face again the horrors of the teocalli; the girl's sudden revulsion, her recoil, her freezing look of mingled terror and remorse and abhorrence — inspired I knew not by what means — had unnerved me. I did not pause to think or reason until I had reached the village from which I had set out three weeks before; and then, indeed, I bitterly repented of my cowardice. Early on the following morning I departed once more for the teocalli, this time accompanied by a Spanish señor whom I could trust. The teocalli was abandoned! — empty! Our footsteps rang hollow on the stone flooring of the deserted turrets; the ring was there to which my bonds had been attached, but no sign of any recent occupation. I searched the forest round about; I caused inquiries to be made of the natives in the neighbourhood; but all of no avail."

      "And you never traced your captors?" I queried as Seymour glanced inquiringly into my face.

      "Never. The natives may have been really ignorant, or they may have been in league with the practices that went on; it comes to the same thing. I have never seen the face of either of them to this day."

      Doxley Seymour remained sunk in thought, his hands deep in his pockets, his eyes bent upon the ground.

      "But the Aztec scroll that you showed me?" I suggested presently. "Where does that come in?"

      "Ah yes! the Aztec scroll," he rejoined absently. "I forgot that. On first awaking in the turret I found that scroll (as I discovered it to be afterwards) bound round my forehead by the thongs at either end. It remained there upon my brow until the day of my flight; and it was not until I was deep in the recesses of the forest that night that I tore it off and thrust it into my pocket. When I examined it I found it to be what you have seen; but I have never yet come across the man who could interpret it to me. I have an idea, a fancy only, that it is a sort of dedication to the gods — an appropriation of me, the victim, to the peculiar deity to whom I was destined to be sacrificed! That is only my conjecture; but, sooner or later, if ingenuity can effect it, I mean to decipher the legend for myself. When that time comes I will let you know; till then, if you can't help me, let us drop the subject."

      And so the conversation turned to other topics — our home-voyage, our memories of the Pocahontas, our plans for the future; and a pleasant evening passed away without further reference to Doxley Seymour's strange adventure in the uplands of Mexico.

      Several weeks went by before I heard from him again. I had been staying in the country, revisiting the scenes which memory still endowed with interest, renewing the friendships which absence had dulled, revigorating the love of my native land, which many years' domicile in other climes, perhaps, had impaired. On the second day after my return to London a short note was delivered at my lodgings, bearing the signature of Doxley Seymour.

      "Dear friend," it ran, "I have solved the Aztec riddle — unaided, by perseverance alone. When you have no engagement more enticing, find your way to Sumatra Terrace, and I will expound the enigma. My conjecture was right; it was my death-warrant."

      It needed no greater inducement to determine me upon prompt acceptance. That very evening I started forth as the gas-lamps in the streets began to wink and glimmer in the wintry twilight, and accomplished the journey to my destination without assistance. Darkness had settled down upon the jostling rows of streets as I turned the corner of Sumatra Terrace and strode down its deserted pavement. The refuse-yard of the marine store, burial-place of many a good ship's carcass, lay black and neglected on the other side of the way; the black row of stunted houses, pierced at intervals by the glimmer of a dim-lit window, seemed blacker than ever by contrast with the brightness of the streets which I had left; one gas-bracket only, fixed in the black dock-wall at the farther end of the terrace, peered blinkingly out of the blackness of the night.

      As I reached the pavement in front of No. 5, the house in which Doxley Seymour lodged, the street-door opened. A beam of light shone for an instant down the outside steps, a dark figure emerged, and the street-door was pulled together as noiselessly as it had opened.

      The dark figure — the figure of a thickly-cloaked woman — tripped down the steps and brushed by me as I stood at the bottom with one hand upon the rusty iron rail. As our shoulders touched she started violently and turned half-way round towards me, for she had not, I believe, perceived me standing there; and as she did so the light from the gas-bracket close at hand in the dock-wall struck upon her face. It was the face of Doxley Seymour's picture!

      I was sure of it. There could be no mistake about that face — the dusky hue, the perfect outlines, above all the strange, intent expression of the eyes — although its setting, some sort of hooded cloak, was now so different. What could she, the Indian maid of Seymour's story, be doing here? I strained my eyes to pierce the darkness of the street; but the cloaked figure, gliding forward with the swift, lithe movement of some forest animal, was already almost indiscernible. A moment later it had melted into the night; and I turned to ascend the steps.

      The same mouldering old person whom I had encountered on my former visit opened the door to my knock, and defiantly informed me, with much shortness of breath, that there was a lady upstairs along with Mr Seymour, so I couldn't go up on no account, but would I leave a message?

      "But the lady, I think, has just left him," I ventured, wondering what turn things were taking. "I met a lady going out as I got here."

      The old person grunted with a somewhat modified aggressiveness, and held open the door an inch or two wider.

      "Oh! very well," she grumbled. "I didn't hear no one go; but I'm none so sharp of hearing as I was. She ain't been with him long, then; but it's no concern of mine. You'd better walk upstairs, mister."

      I cannot be sure whether I recollect aright in thinking that it was with some unusual foreboding of mischief, with some undefined sense of calamity and danger, that I set my foot upon the stairs as the old woman shuffled back to her quarters below. Is my impression only the product of after-events, or did some dawning light of foreknowledge really break in upon my mind? I cannot decide now. I only know that I ran upstairs sharply, anxious to get to Seymour's room and satisfy myself — of what?

      The gas was burning brightly in the room when I entered it. Seymour was seated at the table with his back towards me; leaning sideways in his chair, his arm thrown loosely over the back of it, writing materials spread out on the table before him. He did not turn to greet me when I entered the room; he made no sign of consciousness when I spoke; and then indeed a panic fear, which admitted of no denial, came surging into my breast. I ran across the room towards him and touched his dangling hand; and I knew the worst. His face, though deathly pale, bore the impress of a smile, a smile of welcome; the haft of a broad-bladed dagger — a curiously-wrought haft, I noticed even in that moment, fashioned in the likeness of an eagle's head — protruded from his coat above the heart; and round his brow, like a placard, was bound the Aztec scroll.

      And on the sheet of paper before him, traced in Doxley Seymour's own bold handwriting, fraught with a hideous mocking significance, were written these words — the unfinished translation, I doubt not, of the scroll that was around his brow, the translation that he had been engaged upon at the moment of his death:

      "This is the Doom of Quetzalcoatl, mighty God of the air, moon-faced Father of men, whose honour is our Law inviolable" ——