eaponed. The naked carried arms in the hopes of meeting some
one whom they could overcome and rob; those that had a possession walked
ready to do a battle for its ownership. There was no security, no trust;
the lesson of civilisation had dropped away from these common people as
mud is washed from the feet by rain, and in their new habits and their
thoughts they had gone back to the grade from which savages like those
of Europe have never yet emerged. It was a grim commentary on the
success of Phorenice's rule.

The crowd merged me into their ranks without question, and with them I
pressed forward down the winding streets, once so clean and trim, now so
foul and mud-strewn. Men and women had died of hunger in these streets
these latter years, and rotted where they lay, and we trod their bones
underfoot as we walked. Yet rising out of this squalor and this misery
were great pyramids and palaces, the like of which for splendour and
magnificence had never been seen before. It was a jarring admixture.

In time we came to the open space in the centre of the city, which even
Phorenice had not dared to encroach upon with her ambitious building
schemes, and stood on the secular ground which surrounds the most
ancient, the most grand, and the breast of all this world's temples.

Since the beginning of time, when man first emerged amongst the beasts,
our Lord the Sun has always been his chiefest God, and legend says that
He raised this circle of stones Himself to be a place where votaries
should offer Him worship. It is the fashion amongst us moderns not to
take these old tales in a too literal sense, but for myself, this one
satisfies me. By our wits we can lift blocks weighing six hundred men,
and set them as the capstones of our pyramids. But to uprear the stones
of that great circle would be beyond all our art, and much more would
it be impossible to-day, to transport them from their distant quarries
across the rugged mountains.

There were nine-and-forty of the stones, alternating with spaces, and
set in an accurate circle, and across the tops of them other stones were
set, equally huge. The stones were undressed and rugged; but the huge
massiveness of them impressed the eye more than all the temples and
daintily tooled pyramids of our wondrous city. And in the centre of the
circle was that still greater stone which formed the altar, and round
which was carved, in the rude chiselling of the ancients, the snake and
the outs