le mound of earth more like an ant-heap than a grave; for,
after the custom of his people, Umsuka had been buried sitting. At the
foot of each of the pillars rose a heap of similar shape, but many
times as large. The kings who slept there were accompanied to their
resting-places by numbers of their wives and servants, who had
been slain in solemn sacrifice that they might attend their Lord
whithersoever he should wander.

"What is that you desire and would do?" asked Noma, in a hushed voice.
Bold as she was, the place and the occasion awed her.

"I desire wisdom from the dead!" he answered. "Have I not already told
you, and can I not win it with your help?"

"What dead, husband?"

"Umsuka the king. Ah! I served him living, and at the last he drove me
away from his side. Now he shall serve me, and out of the nowhere I will
call him back to mine."

"Will not this symbol defeat you?" and Noma pointed at the cross hewn in
the granite.

At her words a sudden gust of rage seemed to shake the wizard. His still
eyes flashed, his lips turned livid, and with them he spat upon the
cross.

"It has no power," he said. "May it be accursed, and may he who believes
therein hang thereon! It has no power; but even if it had, according to
the tale of that white liar, such things as I would do have been done
beneath its shadow. By it the dead have been raised--ay! dead kings have
been dragged from death and forced to tell the secrets of the grave.
Come, come, let us to the work."

"What must I do, husband?"

"You shall sit you there, even as a corpse sits, and there for a little
while you shall die--yes, your spirit shall leave you--and I will fill
your body with the soul of him who sleeps beneath; and through your
lips I will learn his wisdom, to whom all things are known."

"It is terrible! I am afraid!" she said. "Cannot this be done
otherwise?"

"It cannot," he answered. "The spirits of the dead have no shape or
form; they are invisible, and can speak only in dreams or through the
lips of one in whose pulses life still lingers, though soul and body be
already parted. Have no fear. Ere his ghost leaves you it shall recall
your own, which till the corpse is cold stays ever close at hand. I did
not think to find a coward in you, Noma."

"I am not a coward, as you know well," she answered passionately, "for
many a deed of magic have we dared together in past days. But this is
fearsome, to die that my body may become the hom