e roared, "you brazen wench, who are so eager to leave a
king's side for a nameless vagrant's care! And you, sir," turning to
me, and fairly trembling with rage and dread, "I will not gainsay that
you have done the errand set you, but it might this once be chance that
got you that cursed token, some one happy turn of luck. I will not
yield my prize on one throw of the dice. Another task you must do.
Once might be chance, but such chance comes not twice."

"You swore to give me the maid this time."

"And why should I keep my word to a half-proved spirit such as you?"

"There are some particularly good reasons why you should," I said,
striking an attitude which I had once seen a music-hall dramatist take
when he was going to blast somebody's future--a stick with a star on
top of it in his hand and forty lines of blank verse in his mouth.

The king writhed, and begged me with a sign to desist.

"We have no wish to anger you. Do us this other task and none will
doubt that you are a potent spirit, and even I, Ar-hap, will listen to
you."

"Well, then," I answered sulkily, "what is it to be this time?"

After a minute's consultation, and speaking slowly as though conscious
of how much hung on his words, the king said,

"Listen! My soothsayer tells me that somewhere there is a city lost in
a forest, and a temple lost in the city, and a tomb lost in the temple;
a city of ghosts and djins given over to bad spirits, wherefore all
human men shun it by day and night. And on the tomb is she who was
once queen there, and by her lies her crown. Quick! oh you to whom all
distances are nothing, and who see, by your finer essence, into all
times and places. Away to that city! Jostle the memories of the
unclean things that hide in its shadows; ask which amongst them knows
where dead Queen Yang still lies in dusty state. Get guides amongst
your comrade ghosts. Find Queen Yang, and bring me here in five
minutes the bloody circlet from her hair."

Then, and then for the first time, I believed the planet was haunted
indeed, and I myself unknowingly under some strange and watchful
influence. Spirits, demons! Oh! what but some incomprehensible power,
some unseen influence shaping my efforts to its ends, could have moved
that hairy barbarian to play a second time into my hands like this, to
choose from the endless records of his world the second of the two
incidents I had touched in hasty travel through it? I was almost
ov