And sometimes, at the dead of night, he took the youth with him to the top of the high pyramid and before the very door of the temple itself. Below them lay the sleeping city amid soft rustlings of the wind and sweet smells of hidden flowers. The ravines were in deep shadow except where a thread of water gleamed faintly. The palm-thatched huts of the common people were huddled in the folds of the valley, with here and there a chieftain’s house built round a little court. The barracks and public buildings were placed on the four sides of larger squares, and in the dark of night their plaster walls showed ghostly white. In the market places still glowed the coals of dying fires, about which were massed the muffled figures of men who had brought their packs to market from afar. It was a solemn hour when mysteries crowd in upon the soul, and a still more solemn station. With heads together, speaking now and then in hushed and reverential voices, they studied the multitudinous stars as these swung grandly around the pole in a march of majesty across the eternal depths of heaven. And they kept their vigil until the great white Star of Morning hung like a splendid jewel above the calm snows of Ixtaccihuatl, the White Woman. Then the blue of the East turned to pearl and rose; new smoke streamed upwards through roofs of heavy thatch; the city stirred and the markets filled with sellers and buyers; the yellow Sun had given another day.