mbroidered with golden stars, such as
Maqueda wore upon her official veil.

There upon the scented pillows and silken coverlet we set our burden
down, the work-worn hands clasped upon the breast in an attitude of
prayer, and one by one bid our farewell to this faithful and upright
man, whose face, as it chanced, we were never to see again, except in
the glass of memory. Well, he had died as he had lived and would have
wished to die--doing his duty and in war. And so we left him. Peace be
to his honoured spirit!

In the blood-stained ante-room, while I dressed and stitched up the
Professor's wounds, a sword-cut on the head, an arrow-graze along the
face, and a spear-prick in the thigh, none of them happily at all deep
or dangerous, we held a brief council.

"Friends," said Maqueda, who was leaning on her lover's arm, "it is
not safe that we should stop here. My uncle's plot has failed for the
moment, but it was only a small and secret thing. I think that soon he
will return again with a thousand at his back, and then----"

"What is in your mind?" asked Oliver. "To fly from Mur?"

"How can we fly," she answered, "when the pass is guarded by Joshua's
men, and the Fung wait for us without? The Abati hate you, my friends,
and now that you have done your work I think that they will kill you if
they can, whom they bore with only till it was done. Alas! alas! that I
should have brought you to this false and ungrateful country," and she
began to weep, while we stared at each other, helpless.

Then Japhet, who all this while had been crouched on the floor, rocking
himself too and fro and mourning in his Eastern fashion for Quick,
whom he had loved, rose, and, coming to the Child of Kings, prostrated
himself before her.

"O Walda Nagasta," he said, "hear the words of your servant. Only three
miles away, near to the mouth of the pass, are encamped five hundred
men of my own people, the Mountaineers, who hate Prince Joshua and his
following. Fly to them, O Walda Nagasta, for they will cleave to you and
listen to me whom you have made a chief among them. Afterwards you can
act as may seem wisest."

Maqueda looked at Oliver questioningly.

"I think that is good advice," he said. "At any rate, we can't be worse
off among the Mountaineers than we are in this undefended place. Tell
your women to bring cloaks that we can throw over our heads, and let us
go."

Five minutes later, a forlorn group filled with fears, we had stolen