t had become a Manatorian.
Long years had passed since Tasor had disappeared as mysteriously as
the Princess Haja and many other of Gahan's subjects. The Jed of Gathol
had long supposed him dead.

"No," replied Tasor, "nor is it a Manatorian name. Come, while I search
for a hiding place for you in some forgotten chamber in one of the
untenanted portions of the palace, and as we go I will tell you briefly
how Tasor the Gatholian became A-Sor the Manatorian.

"It befell that as I rode with a dozen of my warriors along the western
border of Gathol searching for zitidars that had strayed from my herds,
we were set upon and surrounded by a great company of Manatorians. They
overpowered us, though not before half our number was slain and the
balance helpless from wounds. And so I was brought a prisoner to
Manataj, a distant city of Manator, and there sold into slavery. A
woman bought me--a princess of Manataj whose wealth and position were
unequaled in the city of her birth. She loved me and when her husband
discovered her infatuation she beseeched me to slay him, and when I
refused she hired another to do it. Then she married me; but none would
have aught to do with her in Manataj, for they suspected her guilty
knowledge of her husband's murder. And so we set out from Manataj for
Manatos accompanied by a great caravan bearing all her worldly goods
and jewels and precious metals, and on the way she caused the rumor to
be spread that she and I had died. Then we came to Manator instead, she
taking a new name and I the name A-Sor, that we might not be traced
through our names. With her great wealth she bought me a post in The
Jeddak's Guard and none knows that I am not a Manatorian, for she is
dead. She was beautiful, but she was a devil."

"And you never sought to return to your native city?" asked Gahan.

"Never has the hope been absent from my heart, or my mind empty of a
plan," replied Tasor. "I dream of it by day and by night, but always
must I return to the same conclusion--that there can be but a single
means for escape. I must wait until Fortune favors me with a place in a
raiding party to Gathol. Then, once within the boundaries of my own
country, they shall see me no more."

"Perhaps your opportunity lies already within your grasp," said Gahan,
"has not your fealty to your own Jed been undermined by years of
association with the men of Manator." The statement was half challenge.

"And my Jed stood before me now,"