tle
enough to choose between us. "If it please you to stop this pitiful
killing, make yourself the champion of your side, and I will stand for
mine, and we will fight out this quarrel in some fair place, and bind
our parties to abide by the result."

"It would be a grand fight between us two, old friend, and it goes hard
with me to balk you of it. But I cannot pleasure you. I am general here
under Phorenice, and she has given me the strongest orders not to peril
myself. And besides, though you are a great man, Deucalion, you are not
chief. You are not even one of the Three."

"I am King."

Tatho laughed. "Few but yourself would say so, my lord."

"Few truly, but what there are, they are powerful. I was given the name
for the first time yesterday, and as a first blow in the campaign there
was some mischief done in the city. I was there myself, and saw how you
took it."

"You were in Atlantis!"

"I went for Nais. She is on the mountain now, and to-morrow will be my
Queen. Tatho, as a priest to a priest, let me solemnly bring to your
memory the infinite power you bite against on this Sacred Mountain. Your
teaching has warned you of the weapons that are stored in the Ark of
the Mysteries. If you persist in this attack, at the best you can merely
lose; at the worst you can bring about a wreck over which even the High
Gods will shudder as They order it."

"You cannot scare us back now by words," said Tatho doggedly. "And
as for magic, it will be met by magic. Phorenice has found by her own
cleverness as many powers as were ever stored up in the Ark of the
Mysteries."

"Yet she looked on helplessly enough last night, when her royal pyramid
was trundled into a rubbish heap. Zaemon had prophesied that this should
be so, and for a witness, why I myself stood closer to her than we two
stand now, and saw her."

"I will own you took her by surprise somewhat there. I do not understand
these matters myself; I was never more than one of the Seven in the old
days; and now, quite rightly, Phorenice keeps the knowledge of her magic
to herself: but it seems time is needed when one magic is to be met by
another."

"Well," I said, "I know little about the business either. I leave these
matters now to those who are higher above me in the priesthood. Indeed,
having a liking for Nais, it seems I am debarred from ever being given
understanding about the highest of the higher Mysteries. So I content
myself with being a soldier, and