he muttered, "we strove for many years, but it seems that
I have conquered at the last. Well, it is just; for if you could have
had your way, your end would have been my end."

Then very leisurely, as one who is sure that he will not be interrupted,
Hokosa began to climb the tree, till at length some of the green fingers
were within his reach. Resting his back against a bough, one by one he
broke off several of them, and averting his face so that the fumes of
it might not reach him, he caused the thick milk-white juice that they
contained to trickle into the mouth of a little gourd which was hung
about his neck by a string. When he had collected enough of the poison
and carefully corked the gourd with a plug of wood, he descended the
tree again. At the great fork where the main branches sprang from the
trunk, he stood a while contemplating a creeping plant which ran up
them. It was a plant of naked stem, like the tree it grew upon; and,
also like the tree, its leaves consisted of bunches of green spikes
having a milky juice.

"Strange," he said aloud, "that Nature should set the bane and the
antidote side by side, the one twined about the other. Well, so it is in
everything; yes, even in the heart of man. Shall I gather some of this
juice also? No; for then I might repent and save him, remembering that
he has loved me, and thus lose her I seek, her whom I must win back or
be withered. Let the messenger of the King of Heaven save him, if he
can. This tree lies on his path; perchance he may prevail upon its dead
to tell him of the bane and of the antidote." And once more the wizard
laughed mockingly.

*****

The vision passed. At this moment Thomas Owen, recovering from his
swoon, lifted his head from the window-place. The night before him was
as black as it had been, and behind him the little American clock
was still striking the hour of midnight. Therefore he could not have
remained insensible for longer than a few seconds.

A few seconds, yet how much he had seen in them. Truly his want of
faith had been reproved--truly he also had been "warned of God in a
dream,"--truly "his ears had been opened and his instruction sealed."
His soul had been "kept back from the pit," and his life from "perishing
by the sword;" and the way of the wicked had been made clear to him "in
a dream, in a vision of the night when deep sleep falleth upon men."

Not for nothing had he endured that agony, and not for nothing had he
strugg