e for keeping me. Therefore, though the forest roads are
dreadful, and Seth very far away, I will come; I give myself into your
hands. Do what you will with me."

"Then the sooner the better, princess. How soon can you be prepared?"

She smiled, and stooping picked up her slippers, saying as she did so,
"I am ready!"

There were no arrangements to be made. Every instant was of value. So,
to be brief, I threw a dark cloak over the damsel's shoulders, for
indeed she was clad in little more than her loveliness and the gauziest
filaments of a Hither girl's underwear, and hand in hand led her down
the log steps, over the splashing, ankle-deep courtyard, and into the
shadows of the gateway beyond.

Down the slope we went; along towards the harbour, through a score of
deserted lanes where nothing was to be heard but the roar of rain and
the lapping of men and beasts, drinking in the shadows as though they
never would stop, and so we came at last unmolested to the wharf.
There I hid royal Seth between two piles of merchandise, and went to
look for a boat suitable to our needs. There were plenty of small
craft moored to rings along the quay, and selecting a canoe--it was no
time to stand on niceties of property--easily managed by a single
paddle, I brought it round to the steps, put in a fresh water-pot, and
went for the princess.

With her safely stowed in the prow, a helpless, sodden little morsel of
feminine loveliness, things began to appear more hopeful and an escape
down to blue water, my only idea, for the first time possible. Yet I
must needs go and well nigh spoil everything by over-solicitude for my
charge.

Had we pushed off at once there can be no doubt my credit as a spirit
would have been established for all time in the Thither capital, and
the belief universally held that Heru had been wafted away by my
enchantment to the regions of the unknown. The idea would have
gradually grown into a tradition, receiving embellishments in
succeeding generations, until little wood children at their mother's
knees came to listen in awe to the story of how, once upon a time, the
Sun-god loved a beautiful maiden, and drove his fiery chariot across
the black night-fields to her prison door, scorching to death all who
strove to gainsay him. How she flew into his arms and drove away
before all men's eyes, in his red car, into the west, and was never
seen again--the foresaid Sun-god being I, Gulliver Jones, a much
under