looming
high beside it, and the call for caution became trebly accentuated.
Everywhere evidences showed that the country had been drained of its
fighting men. Everywhere women prayed that the battles might end
with the rout of the Priests or the killing of Phorenice, so that the
wretched land might have peace and time to lick its wounds.

An army was investing the sacred Mountain, and its one approach was most
narrowly guarded. Even after having journeyed so far, it seemed as if I
should have to sit hopelessly down without being able to carry out the
orders which had been laid upon me by the High Council, and earn the
reward which had been promised. Force would be useless here. I should
have one good fight--a gorgeous fight--one man against an army, and my
usefulness would be ended.... No; this was the occasion for guile, and
I found covert in the outskirts of a wood, and lay there cudgelling my
brain for a plan.

Across the plain before me lay the grim great walls of the city, with
the heads of its temples, and its palaces, and its pyramids showing
beyond. The step-sides of the royal pyramid held my eye. Phorenice had
expended some of her new-found store of gold in overlaying their former
whiteness with sheets of shining yellow metal. But it was not that
change that moved me. I was remembering that, in the square before the
pyramid, there stood a throne of granite carved with the snake and the
outstretched hand, and in the hollow beneath the throne was Nais, my
love, asleep these eight years now because of the drug that had been
given to her, but alive still, and waiting for me, if only I on my
part could make a way to the place where Zaemon defied the Empress, and
announce my coming.

In that covert of the woods I lay a day and a night raging with myself
for not discovering some plan to get within the defences of the Sacred
Mountain, but in the morning which followed, there came a man towards me
running.

"You need not threaten me with your weapons," he cried. "I mean no harm.
It seems that you are Deucalion; though I should not have known you
myself in those rags and skins, and behind that tangle of hair and
beard. You will give me your good word I know. Believe me, I have not
loitered unduly."

He was a lower priest whom I knew, and held in little esteem; his name
was Ro, a greedy fellow and not overworthy of trust. "From whom do you
come?" I asked.

"Zaemon laid a command on me. He came to my house, though