s,
about a yard away, a slender girlish figure, infinitely out of place in
that world of rough barbarians. Was it possible? Was I dreaming? No,
there was no doubt about it, she was a girl of the Hither folk, slim
and pretty, but with a wonderfully sad look in her gazelle eyes, and
scarcely a sign of the indolent happiness of Seth in the pale little
face regarding me so fixedly.

"Good gracious, miss," I said, still rubbing my eyes and doubting my
senses, "have you dropped from the skies? You are the very last person
I expected to see in this barbarian place."

"And you too, sir. Oh, it is lovely to see one so newly from home, and
free-seeming--not a slave."

"How did you know I was from Seth?"

"Oh, that was easy enough," and with a little laugh she pointed to a
pebble lying between us, on which was a piece of battered sweetmeat in
a perforated bamboo box. Poor An had given me something just like that
in a playful mood, and I had kept it in my pocket for her sake, being,
as you will have doubtless observed, a sentimental young man, and now I
clapped my hand where it should have been, but it was gone.

"Yes," said my new friend, "that is yours. I smelt the sweetmeat
coming up the hill, and crossed the grass until I found you here
asleep. Oh, it was lovely! I took it from your pocket, and white Seth
rose up before my swimming eyes, even at the scent of it. I am Si,
well named, for that in our land means sadness, Si, the daughter of
Prince Hath's chief sweetmeat-maker, so I should know something of such
stuff. May I, please, nibble a little piece?"

"Eat it all, my lass, and welcome. How came you here? But I can
guess. Do not answer if you would rather not."

"Ay, but I will. It is not every day I can speak to ears so friendly
as yours. I am a slave, chosen for my luckless beauty as last year's
tribute to Ar-hap."

"And now?"

"And now the slave of Ar-hap's horse-keeper, set aside to make room for
a fresher face."

"And do you know whose face that is?"

"Not I, a hapless maid sent into this land of horrors, to bear ignominy
and stripes, to eat coarse food and do coarse work, the miserable
plaything of some brute in semi-human form, with but the one
consolation of dying early as we tribute-women always die. Poor
comrade in exile, I only know her as yet by sympathy."

"What if I said it was Heru, the princess?"

The Martian girl sprang to her feet, and clasping her hands exclaimed,

"Heru, th