arrives. If this is so, I want you to guard the Book--but also I want
you to guard my dead body. Let no one touch it until he comes. The key
of the safe is here--" He fumbled weakly for the thin chain that hung
about his neck. "No one must remove it--no one must touch it until he
comes--" His voice faltered.

With a calm gesture John forced him back upon the pillows, and quietly
wiped up the medicine.

But with a fresh effort the old man lifted himself again.

"John," he cried, suddenly, "do you understand what I am saying? Do you
understand that for a whole night you may be alone with the inviolable
Scitsym? 'The Hope of the Universe, by whose Light alone the One and
Only Prophet shall be made known unto the Watchers!'" He murmured the
quotation in a low, rapt voice.

Again the younger man attempted to soothe him.

"Don't distress yourself!" he said, gravely. "I am here. You can trust
me. Lie back and rest."

But his uncle's face was still excitedly perturbed; his pale eyes still
possessed an unnatural brightness.

"Oh yes!" he said, sharply, "I trust you! I have trusted you. I have
left a letter by which you will see that I have trusted you--and that
your fidelity has been rewarded. But this is another matter. Can I trust
you in this? Can I trust you as myself?" As he put the question a sweat
of weakness and excitement broke out over his forehead.

But it was neither his wild appearance nor his question that suddenly
sent the blood into John's face and suddenly set his heart bounding. It
was the abrupt and unlooked-for justification of his own secret,
treasured hope; the tacit acknowledgment of kinship and obligation made
now by Andrew Henderson after seven unfruitful years. A mist rose before
his sight and his mind swam. What was the mad creed of a dying man--of a
dozen dying men--when the reward of his own long probation awaited him?

But the old man was set to his purpose. With shaking fingers he fumbled
with two small objects that depended from the chain about his neck. And
as he held them up, John saw by the glow of the lamp that one was a copy
in miniature of the metal symbol that decorated the little chapel, the
other a long, thin key.

As Henderson disentangled and raised these objects to the light, his
eyes turned again upon his nephew.

"John," he said, tremulously, "I want you to swear to me by the Sign
that you will not touch my body--nor anything on my body--till the
Arch-Councillor comes!