third--Holden was his name.
"Many's the time I've watched Orion rising. Orion's the star for me. Say,
he wipes 'em all out--right out. Watch him rising now."

By a manipulation of the lights Orion moved up the back curtain slowly and
blazed with light nearer the zenith. And La Touche had more than the worth
of its money in this opening to the third act of the play. O'Ryan was a
favorite, at whom La Touche loved to jeer, and the parable of the stars
convulsed them.

At the first words O'Ryan put a hand on himself and tried to grasp the
meaning of it all, but his entrance and the subsequent applause had
confused him. Presently, however, he turned to the back curtain, as Orion
moved slowly up the heavens, and found the key to the situation. He
gasped. Then he listened to the dialogue, which had nothing to do with
"_The Sunburst Trail_."

"What did Orion do, and why does he rise? Has he got to rise? Why was the
gent called Orion in them far-off days?" asked Holden.

"He did some hunting in his time--with a club," Fergus replied. "He kept
making hits, he did. Orion was a spoiler. When he took the field there was
no room for the rest of the race. Why does he rise? Because it is a habit.
They could always get a rise out of Orion. The Athens _Eirenicon_ said
that yeast might fail to rise, but touch the button and Orion would rise
like a bird."

At that instant the galaxy jerked up the back curtain again, and, when the
audience could control itself, Constantine Jopp, grinning meanly, asked:

"Why does he wear the girdle?"

"It is not a girdle--it is a belt," was Dicky Fergus' reply. "The gods
gave it to him because he was a favorite. There was a lady called
Artemis--she was the last of them. But he went visiting with Eos, another
lady of previous acquaintance, down at a place called Ortygia, and Artemis
shot him dead with a shaft Apollo had given her; but she didn't marry
Apollo neither. She laid Orion out on the sky, with his glittering belt
around him. And Orion keeps on rising."

"Will he ever stop rising?" asked Holden.

Followed for the conspirators a disconcerting moment; for, when the
laughter had subsided, a lazy voice came from the back of the hall, "He'll
stop long enough to play with Apollo a little, I guess."

It was Gow Johnson who had spoken, and no man knew Terry O'Ryan better, or
could gauge more truly the course he would take. He had been in many an
enterprise, many a brush with O'Ryan, and his frien