and earth keep such trivial circumstances in mind? He had forgotten, and
so I must have died but for your opportune coming and pious gifts.

"One might argue that our lord employed you as the instruments of my
deliverance," continued the priest, musingly. "I might think it, but
that I know the Shining One of old. It is his pleasure to punish, not to
help; to slay and not to make alive. Never has he given aught of grace
to me who have served him faithfully for these threescore years. And
to-day, if I should sit with him upon the death-chair, he would consume
me as utterly as though I were the foulest-mouthed blasphemer in all
Doom. What think ye, in all honesty, of the Shining One? Is he a god to
be propitiated by sacrifice and offering, to be worshipped and
adored--supreme, almighty, everlasting? Or are we but blind fools,
trembling before a blind force that knows and sees and is nothing,
except as we, its lords and masters, may compel it to work our will?"

The muttering of thunder broke in upon the priest's last words. A
storm-cloud was driving in from the west, low-hanging and menacing. The
priest's face changed.

"He comes! he comes!" he continued, with fanatic intensity. "This is our
lord, in very truth, who now stands before us, calling upon his people
to turn to him ere it be too late. Yet three days, and Doom, Doom the
Mighty, is fallen, is fallen! He has said it--yet three days."

The two women stayed neither to see nor to listen further. Hand-in-hand
they gained the street and ran in the direction of the Citadel Square,
heedless of the rain that was now beginning to fall. Several blocks away
they paused, exhausted, compelled to seek shelter in a doorway from the
fury of the storm. Some one was already there--a man. He turned as they
entered, and Esmay saw that it was Ulick.

For several moments they stood side by side without exchanging a word,
and, indeed, no speech would have been audible amid the almost
continuous crashing of the thunder-peals. Then, as the first violence of
the storm expended itself, Esmay heard her name uttered, and realized
that Ulick was holding her hand in both his own.

"Don't!" she pleaded, and drew her hand away.

Ulick's face hardened. "I might have known it," he said, bitterly. "Yet
he who has been false to friendship may betray love as well."

"He is dead," she said, and Ulick started.

"Constans--dead!" he stammered.

"Hanged at the yard-arm of the _Black Swan_. But