d then proceeded to call his witnesses. Of course
the one vital question was whether by possibility Davilo, who had
never left my premises since the words were uttered, could have
brought about a death, evidently accidental in its immediate cause, at
a distance of many miles. His words were attested by one whom I
recognised as an officer of Endo Zampta, and I was called to confirm
or contradict them. The presiding judge, as I took my place, read a
brief telling terrible menace, expounding the legal penalties of
perjury.

"You will speak the truth," he said, "or you know the consequences."

As he spoke, he encountered Esmo's eyes, and quailed under the gaze,
sinking back into his seat motionless as the bird under the alleged
fascination of the serpent. I admitted that the words in question had
been addressed to me; and I proved that Davilo had been busily engaged
with me from that moment until an hour later than that of the fatal
accident. There being thus no dispute as to the facts, a keen contest
of argument proceeded between the advocates on either side. The
defenders of the prisoner ridiculed with an affectation of scientific
contempt--none the less effective because the chief pleader was
himself an experienced member of our Order--the idea that the actions
or fate of a person at a distance could be affected by the mere will
of another; and related, as absurd and incredible traditions of old to
this purport, some anecdotes which had been communicated to me as
among the best attested and most striking examples of the historical
exercise of the mystic powers. The able and bigoted sceptics, who
prosecuted this day in the interests of science, insisted, with equal
inconsistency and equal skill, on the innumerable recorded and
attested instances of some diabolical power possessed by certain
supposed members of a detested and malignant sect. A year ago the
judges would probably have sided unanimously with the former. But the
feeling that animated the conspiracy, if it should be so called,
against the Zinta, had penetrated all Martial society; and in order to
destroy the votaries of religion, Science, in the persons of her most
distinguished students, was this day ready to abjure her character,
and forswear her most cherished tenets. As has often happened in Mars,
and may one day happen on Earth as the new ideas come into greater
force, proven fact was deliberately set against logical impossibility;
and for once--what pro