other,
wayworn and fierce, but also clad in mail, and wearing a knight's crest
upon your shield. You with drawn sword in hand, and facing you,
also with drawn sword, rage and despair on his dark face, a stately,
foreign-looking man, whom mine eyes have never seen, but whom I should
know again midst a million, a man who, I think, was doomed to fill the
grave.

"Lastly, standing on a little mound near to the bank of the swirling
river, where jagged sheets of ice ground against each other like the
teeth of the wicked in hell, strangely capped and clad in black, his
arms crossed upon his breast and a light smile in his cold eyes, he who
was called Murgh in Cathay, he who named himself Gateway of the Gods!

"For a moment I saw, then all was gone, and I found myself--I know not
why--walking toward the mighty arch whereon sat the iron dragons. In its
shadow I turned and looked back. There at the head of the pool the man
was seated in his chair, and to right and to left of him came the black
doves and the white doves in countless multitudes, all the thousands
of them that had been stayed in their flight pouring down upon him at
once--or so I thought. They wheeled about his head, they hid his face
from me, and I--I departed into the shadow of the arch, and I saw him
and them no more."

CHAPTER IV

THE PENANCE

The tale was done, and these two stood staring at one another from each
side of the glowing hearth, whose red light illumined their faces. At
length the heavy silence was broken by Sir Andrew.

"I read your heart, Hugh," he said, "as Murgh read mine, for I think
that he gave me not only strength, but something of his wisdom also,
whereby I was able to win safe back to England and to this hour to walk
unharmed by many a pit. I read your heart, and in its book is written
that you think me mad, one who pleases his old age with tales of marvel
that others told him, or which his own brain fashioned."

"Not so, Father," answered Hugh uneasily, for in truth some such
thoughts were passing through his mind. "Only--only the thing is very
strange, and it happened so long ago, before Eve and I were born, before
those that begot us were born either, perchance."

"Yes; more than fifty years ago--it may be sixty--I forget. In sixty
years the memory plays strange tricks with men, no doubt, so how can I
blame you if you believe--what you do believe? And yet, Hugh," he went
on after a pause, and speaking with passion, "this