rancisco were seized with uncontrollable laughter, while
even Soa deigned to smile. But Leonard did not smile.

"Oh, you last descendant of generations of asses!" he said bitterly.
"You ass with four ears and a tenfold bray! What have you done? You have
hurled the precious stone at the head of him who brought it, and now he
will bring no more. Had it not been for you, doubtless with every meal
such stones would have been offered to you, and though you grew thin we
should all of us have become rich, and that without trouble, tricks, or
violence."

"Forgive me, Baas," lamented Otter, "but my rage took away my reason,
and I forgot. See now what it is to be a god. It is to be fed upon stuff
such as would gripe an ox. Oh, Baas, I would that these wild men had
made you a god and left me your servant!" And again he gazed with
disgust upon the watercress and rows of leathery vegetables resembling
turnips.

"You had better eat them, Otter," said Juanna, who was still choking
with laughter. "If you don't you may get nothing more for days.
Evidently you are supposed to have a small appetite."

Then, driven to it by his ravening hunger, the wretched Otter fell upon
the turnips and munched them sullenly, Leonard rating him all the while
for his unequalled stupidity.

Scarcely had he finished his meal when there was a stir without, and
once again priests entered, headed on this occasion by that same aged
man who had acted as a spokesman when Juanna declared herself on the
previous day, and who, as they had discovered, was named Nam. In fact
he had many other and much longer names, but as this was the shortest ad
most convenient of them, they adopted it.

It chanced that Leonard was standing by Soa, and when this priest
entered, whom she now saw face to face for the first time, he noticed
that she started, trembled, and then drew back into the shadow of the
throne.

"Some friend of the old lady's youth," thought Leonard to himself. "I
hope he won't recognise her, that is all."

Nam bent himself in adoration before the gods, then began an address,
the substance of which Juanna translated from time to time. Bitterly did
he grieve, he said, that such an insult had been offered to the Snake
as the presenting to him among his food of the red stone, known as the
Blood of Aca. That man who had done this folly was doomed to die, if,
indeed, he were not already dead. Well could they understand that, the
Mother and Snake having become