, that it might
be preserved in the archives of the temple for ever. This done, the
priests began a funeral chant and a solemn invocation to the great Lord
of the Under-world that he would receive this spirit and acquit it there
as here it had been acquitted by the Hesea, his minister.

Ere their dirge ended certain of the priests, advancing with slow steps,
lifted the bier and carried it to the edge of the gulf; then at a sign
from the Mother, hurled it feet foremost into the fiery lake below,
whilst all watched to see how it struck the flame. For this they held to
be an omen, since should the body turn over in its descent it was taken
as a sign that the judgment of mortal men had been refused in the Place
of the Immortals. It did not turn; it rushed downwards straight as a
plummet and plunged into the fire hundreds of feet below, and there
for ever vanished. This indeed was not strange since, as we discovered
afterwards, the feet were weighted.

In fact this solemn rite was but a formula that, down to the exact
words of judgment and committal, had been practised here from unknown
antiquity over the bodies of the priests and priestesses of the
Mountain, and of certain of the great ones of the Plain. So it was in
ancient Egypt, whence without doubt this ceremony of the trial of the
dead was derived, and so it continued to be in the land of Hes, for no
priestess ever ventured to condemn the soul of one departed.

The real interest of the custom, apart from its solemnity and awful
surroundings, centred in the accurate knowledge displayed by the masked
Accuser and Advocate of the life-deeds of the deceased. It showed that
although the College of Hes affected to be indifferent to the doings and
politics of the people of the Plain that they once ruled and over which,
whilst secretly awaiting an opportunity of re-conquest, they still
claimed a spiritual authority, the attitude was assumed rather than
real. Moreover it suggested a system of espionage so piercing and
extraordinary that it was difficult to believe it unaided by the
habitual exercise of some gift of clairvoyance.

The service, if I may call it so, was finished; the dead man had
followed the record of his sins into that lurid sea of fire, and by
now was but a handful of charred dust. But if his book had closed, ours
remained open and at its strangest chapter. We knew it, all of us, and
waited, our nerves thrilled, with expectancy.

The Hesea sat brooding on h