t to be a
statue. Indeed, he thought it was until it spoke.

"Evan," said the voice, and it spoke with the simple authority of some
forgotten father revisiting his children, "you have remained here long
enough, and your sword is wanted elsewhere."

"Wanted for what?" asked the young man, accepting the monstrous event
with a queer and clumsy naturalness; "what is my sword wanted for?"

"For all that you hold dear," said the man standing in the moonlight;
"for the thrones of authority and for all ancient loyalty to law."

Evan looked up at the lunar orb again as if in irrational appeal--a moon
calf bleating to his mother the moon. But the face of Luna seemed as
witless as his own; there is no help in nature against the supernatural;
and he looked again at the tall marble figure that might have been made
out of solid moonlight.

Then he said in a loud voice: "Who are you?" and the next moment was
seized by a sort of choking terror lest his question should be answered.
But the unknown preserved an impenetrable silence for a long space and
then only answered: "I must not say who I am until the end of the world;
but I may say what I am. I am the law."

And he lifted his head so that the moon smote full upon his beautiful
and ancient face.

The face was the face of a Greek god grown old, but not grown either
weak or ugly; there was nothing to break its regularity except a rather
long chin with a cleft in it, and this rather added distinction than
lessened beauty. His strong, well-opened eyes were very brilliant but
quite colourless like steel.

MacIan was one of those to whom a reverence and self-submission in
ritual come quite easy, and are ordinary things. It was not artificial
in him to bend slightly to this solemn apparition or to lower his voice
when he said: "Do you bring me some message?"

"I do bring you a message," answered the man of moon and marble. "The
king has returned."

Evan did not ask for or require any explanation. "I suppose you can take
me to the war," he said, and the silent silver figure only bowed its
head again. MacIan clambered into the silver boat, and it rose upward to
the stars.

To say that it rose to the stars is no mere metaphor, for the sky had
cleared to that occasional and astonishing transparency in which one can
see plainly both stars and moon.

As the white-robed figure went upward in his white chariot, he said
quite quietly to Evan: "There is an answer to all the folly talk