ho and echo through the amphitheatre, and then from the frozen seats,
the hillocks of ice and snow, there was a long, low sound, as of sorrow,
and a voice came after:

"Sleep--sleep! Blessed be the just and the keepers of vows."

Sherburne stood shaking, as though he had seen a host of spirits. His
eyes on the great seats of judgment, he said to Pierre:

"See, see, how they sit there, grey and cold and awful!"

But Pierre shook his head.

"There is nothing," he said, "nothing;" yet he knew that Sherburne was
looking upon the men of judgment of the Kimash Hills, the sleepers. He
looked round, half fearfully, for if here were those great children of
the ages, where was the keeper of the house, the Red Patrol?

Even as he thought, a figure in scarlet with a noble face and a high
pride of bearing stood before them, not far away. Sherburne clutched his
arm.

Then the Red Patrol, the Scarlet Hunter spoke: "Why have you sinned your
sins and broken your vows within our house of judgment? Know ye not that
in the new springtime of the world ye shall be outcast, because ye have
called the sleepers to judgment before their time? But I am the hunter
of the lost. Go you," he said to Sherburne, pointing, "where a sick man
lies in a hut in the Shikam Valley. In his soul find thine own again."
Then to Pierre: "For thee, thou shalt know the desert and the storm and
the lonely hills; thou shalt neither seek nor find. Go, and return no
more."

The two men, Sherburne falteringly, stepped down and moved to the open
plain. They turned at the great entrance and looked back. Where they had
stood there rested on his long bow the Red Patrol. He raised it, and a
flaming arrow flew through the sky towards the south. They followed
its course, and when they looked back a little afterwards, the great
judgment-house was empty, and the whole north was silent as the
sleepers.

At dawn they came to the hut in the Shikam Valley, and there they found
a trapper dying. He had sinned greatly, and he could not die without
someone to show him how, to tell him what to say to the angel of the
cross-roads.

Sherburne, kneeling by him, felt his own new soul moved by a holy fire,
and, first praying for himself, he said to the sick man: "For if we
confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

Praying for both, his heart grew strong, and he heard the sick man say,
ere he journeyed forth to