dreams haunted you?"

"Aye, friend," I answered, "dreams of that fearsome precipice and of the
last leap."

"Aught else?" she asked.

"Nay; is it not enough? Oh! what a journey to have taken to befriend a
queen."

"To befriend a queen," she repeated puzzled. "What means the man? You
swear you have had no other dreams?"

"Aye, I swear by the Symbol of Life and the Mount of the Wavering Flame,
and by yourself, O Queen from the ancient days."

Then I sighed and pretended to swoon, for I could think of nothing else
to do. As I closed my eyes I saw her face that had been red as dawn turn
pale as eve, for my words and all which might lie behind them, had gone
home. Moreover, she was in doubt, for I could hear her fingering the
handle of the dagger. Then she spoke aloud, words for my ears if they
still were open.

"I am glad," she said, "that he dreamed no other dreams, since had he
done so and babbled of them it would have been ill-omened, and I do not
wish that one who has travelled far to visit us should be hurled to
the death-dogs for burial; one, moreover, who although old and hideous,
still has the air of a wise and silent man."

Now while I shivered at these unpleasant hints--though what the
"death-dogs" in which people were buried might be, I could not
conceive--to my intense joy I heard the foot of the Guardian on the
stairs, heard him too enter the room and saw him bow before the lady.

"How go these sick men, niece?"[*] he said in his cold voice.

[*] I found later that the Khania, Atene, was not Simbri's
niece but his great-niece, on the mother's side.--L. H. H.

"They swoon, both of them," she answered.

"Indeed, is it so? I thought otherwise. I thought they woke."

"What have you heard, Shaman (i.e. wizard)?" she asked angrily.

"I? Oh! I heard the grating of a dagger in its sheath and the distant
baying of the death-hounds."

"And what have you seen, Shaman?" she asked again, "looking through the
Gate you guard?"

"Strange sight, Khania, my niece. But--men awake from swoons."

"Aye," she answered, "so while this one sleeps, bear him to another
chamber, for he needs change, and the lord yonder needs more space and
untainted air."

The Guardian, whom she called "Shaman" or Magician, held a lamp in his
hand, and by its light it was easy to see his face, which I watched
out of the corner of my eye. I thought that it wore a very strange
expression, one moreover that alarmed me somewh