it your pleasure to see that end of which you
spoke, the end of your attempt to force yonder maiden to be your queen
or love?"

"Aye, Woman," answered Janees, "if you have a trick, show it--why not?"

"So be it, King; but, of course, I have your word that you will
not blame me if by any chance the trick should not prove to your
liking--your royal word. Now stand you there, and look into this water
while I pray our gods, the gods of my own country, to be gracious, and
to show you what shall be your state at this same hour on the third
night from now, which you say and hope shall be the night of your
wedding. Sing, my Daughter, sing that old and sacred song which I have
taught you. It will serve to while away the tedium of our waiting until
the gods declare themselves, if such be their will."

Then Asti knelt down by the pool, and bent her head, and stretched out
her hands over the water, and Tua touched the strings of her harp and
began to chant very solemnly in an unknown tongue. The words of that
chant were low and sweet, yet it seemed to Janees that they fell like
ice upon his hot blood, and froze it within his veins. At first he kept
his eyes fixed upon her beauty, but by slow degrees something drew them
down to the water of the pool.

Look! A mist gathered on its blackness. It broke and cleared and there,
as in a mirror, he saw a picture. He saw himself lying stripped and
dead, a poor, naked corpse with wide eyes that stared to heaven, and
gashed throat and sides whence the blood ran upon the marble floor of
his own great hall, ruined by fire, with its scorched pillars pointing
like fingers to the moon. There he lay alone, and by him stood a hound,
his own hound, that lifted up its head and seemed to howl.

The last words of Tua's chant died away, and with them that picture
passed. Janees leapt back from the edge of the pool, glaring at Asti.

"Sorceress!" he cried, "were you not my guest who names herself the
mother of her who shall be my Queen, I swear that to-night you should
die by torture in payment of this foul trick of yours."

"Yet as it is," answered Asti, "I think that I shall not die, since
those who call upon the gods must not quarrel with their oracle.
Moreover, I know now what you saw, and it may be nothing but a fantasy
of your brain or of mine. Now let us sleep, I pray you, O King, for we
are weary, and leave its secrets to the future. In three days we shall
know what they may be."

Then, wi