ng for myself."

"It is not for me to offer advice to one of the Seven," said Ro
doubtfully.

"It is not."

"But they say that the Empress is not overpleased at your absence," he
mumbled. "I should not like harm to come in your way, Deucalion," he
said aloud.

"The future is in the hands of the most High Gods, Ro, and I at least
believe that They will deal out our fates to each of us as They in Their
infinite wisdom see best, though you seem to have lost your faith. And
now I must be your debtor for a passage out through the doors. Plagues!
man, it is no use your holding out your hand to me. I do not own a coin
in all the world."

He mumbled something about "force of habit" as he led the way down
towards the door, and I responded tartly enough about the unpleasantness
of his begging customs. "If it were not for your sort and your customs,
the Priests' Clan would not be facing this crisis to-day."

"One must live," he grumbled, as he pressed his levers, and the massive
stone in the doorway swung ajar.

"If you had been a more capable man, I might have seen the necessity,"
said I, and passed into the open and left him. I could never bring
myself to like Ro.

A motley crowd filled the street which ran past the front of this
obscure temple, and all were hurrying one way. With what I had been
told, it did not take much art to guess that the great stone circle of
our Lord the Sun was their mark, and it grieved me to think of how many
venerable centuries that great fane had upreared before the weather and
the earth tremors, without such profanation as it would witness to-day.
And also the thought occurred to me, "Was our Great Lord above drawing
this woman on to her destruction? Would He take some vast and final act
of vengeance when she consummated her final sacrilege?"

But the crowd pressed on, thrilled and excited, and thinking little
(as is a crowd's wont) on the deeper matters which lay beneath the bare
spectacle. From one quarter of the city walls the din of an attack from
the besiegers made itself clearly heard from over the house, and the
temples and the palaces intervening, but no one heeded it. They had
grown callous, these townsfolk, to the battering of rams, and the flight
of fire-darts, and the other emotions of a bombardment. Their nerves,
their hunger, their desperation, were strung to such a pitch that little
short of an actual storm could stir them into new excitement over the
siege.

All were w