ve stolidity. Plainly he had neither heard nor understood aught
of all that had passed.

"It is too late," muttered the priest. "The crash of steel is now the
only music to which the old lion will prick his ears, and the Shining
One must strike for his own honor."

Suddenly the obscurity lightened. A downpour of rain was imminent, but
the sky had lost its terrifying aspect of abnormality; the yellowish
haze that in superstitious eyes presaged some dreadful convulsion of
nature had drifted away before the rising wind--it would be a pelting
shower and nothing more. Quinton Edge looked around, smiling.

"So it was only a player's effect--a few fireworks and the rattling of a
big drum--an opportune conjunction of bad news and bad weather that is
hardly likely to occur again. The next time that the Shining One
condescends to forge his thunderbolts----"

"They will fall from out of a cloudless sky," interrupted the priest,
with a vehemence that in spite of himself shook the cool confidence of
the Doomsman. Yet the latter flung back the challenge contemptuously.

"Words, words--painted bladders with which to belabor the backs of fools
and children. It calls for a buffet of sturdier sort to convince a man."

The priest measured his adversary. "Let it be a blow, then," he said,
coldly, "since a prating mouth knows no other argument than the mailed
fist. But you shall not see the hand that smites, nor even know the
quarter from whence it comes. Build high your walls and your bulwarks;
they shall but prove the greater peril when they crumble under the
impact of our lord's hammer. You will believe; yes, when trencher-mate
and bedfellow are stricken at your side, and yet no man shall be able to
say at what instant the avenger's shadow passed between, or catch the
faintest sound of his retreating footsteps. All in his good time to whom
a day and an hour and a cycle of the ages are as one."

A dozen big raindrops splashed down, and from the distance came the
patter of the advancing hail. Quinton Edge drew himself up stiffly; the
necessity of immediate action was a relief more welcome than he would
have cared to own. He stepped to Dom Gillian's chair, and, putting his
hands under the armpits of the old man, lifted him unresisting to his
feet.

"Help me with him to the White Tower," he said, with curt command, and
Prosper obeyed in silence. Together they managed to get Dom Gillian down
the steps and across the open space to the