" he cried, "you know that
while no common man dare harm them they may be slain by the hand of a
jeddak with impunity!"

The girl did not reply, nor would she speak again, for all his threats
and rage, for she knew now that none in all Manator dared harm her save
O-Tar, the jeddak, and after a while the padwar left, taking his men
with him. And after they had gone Tara stood for long looking out upon
the city of Manator, and wondering what more of cruel wrongs Fate held
in store for her. She was standing thus in silent meditation when there
rose to her the strains of martial music from the city below--the deep,
mellow tones of the long war trumpets of mounted troops, the clear,
ringing notes of foot-soldiers' music. The girl raised her head and
looked about, listening, and Lan-O, standing at an opposite window,
looking toward the west, motioned Tara to join her. Now they could see
across roofs and avenues to The Gate of Enemies, through which troops
were marching into the city.

"The Great Jed is coming," said Lan-O, "none other dares enter thus,
with blaring trumpets, the city of Manator. It is U-Thor, Jed of
Manatos, second city of Manator. They call him The Great Jed the length
and breadth of Manator, and because the people love him, O-Tar hates
him. They say, who know, that it would need but slight provocation to
inflame the two to war. How such a war would end no one could guess;
for the people of Manator worship the great O-Tar, though they do not
love him. U-Thor they love, but he is not the jeddak," and Tara
understood, as only a Martian may, how much that simple statement
encompassed.

The loyalty of a Martian to his jeddak is almost an instinct, and
second not even to the instinct of self-preservation at that. Nor is
this strange in a race whose religion includes ancestor worship, and
where families trace their origin back into remote ages and a jeddak
sits upon the same throne that his direct progenitors have occupied
for, perhaps, hundreds of thousands of years, and rules the descendants
of the same people that his forebears ruled. Wicked jeddaks have been
dethroned, but seldom are they replaced by other than members of the
imperial house, even though the law gives to the jeds the right to
select whom they please.

"U-Thor is a just man and good, then?" asked Tara of Helium.

"There be none nobler," replied Lan-O. "In Manatos none but wicked
criminals who deserve death are forced to play at jetan, and