Crossword-Solution: PABAS 5 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 9

But this was not easy, for like her father Montezuma, Otomie clung to the gods of her people, though she hated the priests, and save when the victims were the foes of her country, shrank from the rites of human sacrifice, which she said were instituted by the _pabas_, since in the early days there were no men offered on the altars of the gods, but flowers only.

The Indian _pabas_ wrought cruelties enough when, tearing out the victim’s heart, they offered it like incense to Huitzel or to Quetzal, but they at least dismissed his soul to the Mansions of the Sun.

One day, it was when we had ruled for some fourteen years in the City of Pines, it came to my knowledge that the _pabas_ of this clan had captured a Christian priest, and designed to offer him to the god Tezcat.

But swiftly as I travelled the vengeance of the _pabas_ had been more swift, and I arrived at the village only to find the “Christian Devil” in the act of being led to sacrifice before the image of a hideous idol that was set upon a stake and surrounded with piles of skulls.

Had I saved Father Pedro from the hands of the _pabas_ of the Otomie, it is likely enough that I should not to-day be writing this history here in the valley of the Waveney.