asonably no
care that mortal man can exercise will prevent the possibility of their
god--seeing he is but one of themselves--growing old and feeble and dying
at last. To prevent which calamity, these gentile folk have invented (as
I believe by the aid and device of Sathan) this horrid and most unnatural
practice. The man-god must be killed so soon as he showeth in body or
mind that his native powers are beginning to feail. And it is necessary
that he be killed, according to their faith, in this ensuing fashion.

"If the man-god were to die slowly by a death in the course of nature,
the ways of the world might be stopped altogether. Hence these savages
catch the soul of their god, as it were, ere it grow old and feeble, and
transfer it betimes, by a magic device, to a suitable successor. And
surely, they say, this suitable successor can be none other than him that
is able to take it from him. This, then, is their horrid counsel and
device--that each one of their gods should kill his antecessor. In doing
thus, he taketh the old god's life and soul, which thereupon migrates and
dwells within him. And by this tenure--may Heaven be merciful to me, a
sinner--do I, Nathaniel Cross, of the county of Doorham, now hold this
dignity of Too-Keela-Keela, having slain, therefor, in just quarrel, my
antecessor in the high godship."

As he reached these words Methuselah paused, and choked in his throat
slightly. The mere mechanical effort of continuing the speech he had
learned by heart two hundred years before, and repeated so often since
that it had become part of his being, was now almost too much for him.
The Frenchman was right. They were only just in time. A few days later,
and the secret would have died with the bird that preserved it.

CHAPTER XXIV.

AN UNFINISHED TALE.

For a minute or two Methuselah mumbled inarticulately to himself. Then,
to their intense discomfiture, he began once more: "In the nineteenth
year of the reign of his most gracious majesty, King Charles the Second,
I, Nathaniel Cross--"

"Oh, this will never do," Felix cried. "We haven't got yet to the secret
at all. Muriel, do try to set him right. He must waste no breath. We
can't afford now to let him go all over it."

Muriel stretched out her hand and soothed the bird gently as before.
"Having slain, therefore, my predecessor in the high godship," she
suggested, in the same singsong voice as the parrot's.

To her immense relief, Methuselah