my eyes for fear of
what I should see lying beside me. I wondered who it could be who
ministered to me. Carthoris must have had a companion whom I had not
seen. Well, I must face the inevitable some time, so why not now, and
with a sigh I opened my eyes.

Leaning over me was Carthoris, a great bruise upon his forehead where
the chain had struck, but alive, thank God, alive! There was no one
with him. Reaching out my arms, I took my boy within them, and if ever
there arose from any planet a fervent prayer of gratitude, it was there
beneath the crust of dying Mars as I thanked the Eternal Mystery for my
son's life.

The brief instant in which I had seen and recognized Carthoris before
the chain fell must have been ample to check the force of the blow. He
told me that he had lain unconscious for a time--how long he did not
know.

"How came you here at all?" I asked, mystified that he had found me
without a guide.

"It was by your wit in apprising me of your existence and imprisonment
through the youth, Parthak. Until he came for his harness and his
sword, we had thought you dead. When I had read your note I did as you
had bid, giving Parthak his choice of the harnesses in the guardroom,
and later bringing the jewelled short-sword to him; but the minute that
I had fulfilled the promise you evidently had made him, my obligation
to him ceased. Then I commenced to question him, but he would give me
no information as to your whereabouts. He was intensely loyal to Zat
Arras.

"Finally I gave him a fair choice between freedom and the pits beneath
the palace--the price of freedom to be full information as to where you
were imprisoned and directions which would lead us to you; but still he
maintained his stubborn partisanship. Despairing, I had him removed to
the pits, where he still is.

"No threats of torture or death, no bribes, however fabulous, would
move him. His only reply to all our importunities was that whenever
Parthak died, were it to-morrow or a thousand years hence, no man could
truly say, 'A traitor is gone to his deserts.'

"Finally, Xodar, who is a fiend for subtle craftiness, evolved a plan
whereby we might worm the information from him. And so I caused Hor
Vastus to be harnessed in the metal of a Zodangan soldier and chained
in Parthak's cell beside him. For fifteen days the noble Hor Vastus
has languished in the darkness of the pits, but not in vain. Little by
little he won the confiden