nce of this revelation. I
knew the impossibility of questioning the authority to which I had
pledged obedience. I realised with great amazement the fact that a
secondary position on my own estate, and a personal charge of my own
safety, had been accepted by a Chief of the Zinta.

"There is, of course," I replied at last, "no answer to a mandate so
enforced. But, Chief, reluctant as I am to say it, I fear--fear as I
have never done before; and yet fear I cannot say, I cannot guess
what."

"There is no cause for alarm," he said somewhat contemptuously. "In
this journey, sudden, speedy, and made under our guard as on our
summons, there is little or none of that peril which has beset you so
long."

"You forget, Chief," I rejoined, "that you speak to a soldier, whose
chosen trade was to risk life at the word of a superior; to one whose
youth thought no smile so bright as that of naked steel, and had often
'kissed the lips of the lightning' ere the down darkened his own. At
any rate, you have told me daily for more than a year that I am living
under constant peril of assassination; have I seemed to quail thereat?
If, then, I am now terrified for the first time, that which I dread,
without knowing or dreaming what it is, is assuredly a peril worse
than any I have known, the shadow of a calamity against which I have
neither weapon nor courage. It cannot be for myself that I am thus
appalled," I continued, the thought flashing into my mind as I spoke
it, "and there is but one whose life is so closely bound with mine
that danger to her should bring such terror as this. I go at your
bidding, but I will not go alone."

He paused for some time, apparently in perplexity, certainly in deep
thought, before he replied.

"As you will. One thing more. The slips of tafroo with which you
furnished me have been under the eyes of which you have heard. This"
(handing me the one that bore no mark) "has passed, so far as the
highest powers of the sense that is not of the body can perceive,
through none but innocent hands. The hand from which you received
this" (the marked slip) "is spotted with treason, and may to-morrow be
red."

I was less impressed by this declaration than probably would have been
any other member of the Order. I had seen on Earth the most marvellous
perceptions of a perfectly lucid vision succeeded, sometimes within
the space of the same day, by dreams or hallucinations the most
absolutely deceptive. I felt, therefo