y but spake idly.

KING: What said they?

FIRST QUESTIONER: O, the King's Majesty, they said nought fitting.

KING: They muttered so that no man heard them clearly?

FIRST QUESTIONER: They spake. But it was not fitting.

KING: Did they speak of small things happening long ago?

FIRST QUESTIONER: O, the King's Majesty, it was not fitting.

KING: What said they? Speak!

FIRST QUESTIONER: The man you gave to me, O King, said: "No man that
knew the counsels of the gods, who alone see future things, would say
the gods advised King Hamaran ill when they bade him drink out of a
poisoned cup." Then I put the question straightly and he died.

KING: The gods! He said it was the gods!... And the other?

SECOND QUESTIONER: He also said the same, O the King's Majesty.

KING: Both said the same. They were questioned in different chambers?

FIRST QUESTIONER: In different chambers, O King. I questioned mine in
the Red Chamber.

KING (_to_ SECOND QUESTIONER): And yours?

SECOND QUESTIONER: In the Chamber of Rats.

KING: Begone!

[_Exeunt_ QUESTIONERS.

So ... It _was_ the gods.

[_The acolytes are crouched upon the floor. He does not notice them
since they ceased to moan._

The gods! With what dark and dreadful thing have they clouded the
future?

Well, I will face it! But what is it? Is it one of those things a strong
man can bear? Or is it----?

The future is more terrible than the grave, that has its one secret
only.

No man, he said, could say that the gods had advised me ill when they
bade me drink out of a poisoned cup.

What have the gods seen? What dreadful work have they overlooked where
Destiny sits alone, making evil years? The gods, he said, who alone see
future things.

Yes, I have known men who never were warned by the gods, and did not
drink poison, and came upon evil days, suddenly like a ship upon rocks
no mariner knows. Yes, poison to some of _them_ would have been very
precious.

The gods have warned me and I have not hearkened, and must go on alone:
must enter that strange country of the future whose paths are so dark to
man ... to meet a doom there that the gods have seen.

The gods have seen it! How shall I thwart the gods? How fight against
the shapers of the hills?

Would that I had been warned. Would I had heeded when they bade me drink
of the cup the Ambassador said was poisoned.

[_Far off is heard that merry bar of music blown by the_ AMBASSADOR'S
HERALD _on his horn._]