ich you and the lady who accompanies you occupy."

"You are right," Felix answered, with profoundly painful interest. "And
what, then, becomes of the king and queen who are sacrificed?"

"I will tell you," M. Peyron answered, dropping his voice still lower
into a sympathetic key. "But steel your mind for the worst beforehand. It
is sufficiently terrible. On the day of your arrival, this, I learn from
my Shadow, is just what happened. That night, Tu-Kila-Kila made his great
feast, and offered up the two chief human sacrifices of the year, the
free-will offering and the scapegoat of trespass. They keep then a
festival, which answers to our own New-Year's day in Europe. Next
morning, in accordance with custom, the King of the Rain and the Queen of
the Clouds were to be publicly slain, in order that a new and more
vigorous king and queen should be chosen in their place, who might make
the crops grow better and the sky more clement. In the midst of this
horrid ceremony, you and mademoiselle, by pure chance, arrived. You were
immediately selected by Tu-Kila-Kila, for some reason of his own, which I
do not sufficiently understand, but which is, nevertheless, obvious to
all the initiated, as the next representatives of the rain-giving gods.
You were presented to Heaven on their little platform raised about the
ground, and Heaven accepted you. Then you were envisaged with the
attributes of divinity; the care of the rain and the clouds was made over
to you; and immediately after, as soon as you were gone, the old king and
queen were laid on an altar near Tu-Kila-Kila's home, and slain with
tomahawks. Their flesh was next hacked from their bodies with knives,
cooked, and eaten; their bones were thrown into the sea, the mother of
all waters, as the natives call it. And that is the fate, I fear the
inevitable fate, that will befall you and mademoiselle at these wretches'
hands about the commencement of a fresh season."

Felix knew the worst now, and bent his head in silence. His worst fears
were confirmed; but, after all, even this knowledge was better than so
much uncertainty.

And now that he knew when "his time was up," as the natives phrased it,
he would know when to redeem his promise to Muriel.

CHAPTER XVI.

A VERY FAINT CLUE.

"But you hinted at some hope, some chance of escape," Felix cried at
last, looking up from the ground and mastering his emotion. "What now is
that hope? Conceal nothing from me."

"Mon