CHAPTER VIII
Before the Black Shrine
ARCHER KENNEDY was, as Boots had once observed, “a man of more refined education” than the Irish lad. Moreover, he had a quick, furtive mind, that snatched at whatever came its way and hoarded it as a jackdaw hoards its stealings, on a bare chance that it might some day prove practically useful. Stored among many such smatterings was a fair knowledge of Aztec antiquities, picked up partly in his college days, partly at close range in Yucatan and Campeche.
When Biornson had said: “You are housed in the seat of Nacoc-Yaotl,” the words had not been quite meaningless to him.
In the tangled mazes of old Aztec theology, many a god possessed not only two or more names, but as many personalities, some of them as divergent from one another as black from w
