drous large.

In her hands she carried those two plates of metal which I had seen
lying in the coffin of the Sleeper Oro. These she gave to him, then fell
back out of his hearing--if it were ever possible to do this, a point
on which I am not sure--and began to talk to me. I noted at once that in
the few hours during which she was absent, her knowledge of the Orofenan
tongue seemed to have improved greatly as though she had drunk deeply
from some hidden fount of memory. Now she spoke it with readiness, as
Oro had done when he addressed the sorcerers, although many of the words
she used were not known to me, and the general form of her language
appeared archaic, as for instance that of Spenser is compared with
modern English. When she saw I did not comprehend her, however, she
would stop and cast her sentences in a different shape, till at length I
caught her meaning. Now I give the substance of what she said.

"You are safe," she began, glancing first at the palm ropes that lay
upon the rock and then at my wrists, one of which was cut.

"Yes, Lady Yva, thanks to your father."

"You should say thanks to me. My father was thinking of other things,
but I was thinking of you strangers, and from where I was I saw those
wicked ones coming to kill you."

"Oh! from the top of the mountain, I suppose."

She shook her head and smiled but vouchsafed no further explanation,
unless her following words can be so called. These were:

"I can see otherwise than with my eyes, if I choose." A statement that
caused Bickley, who was listening, to mutter:

"Impossible! What the deuce can she mean? Telepathy, perhaps."

"I saw," she continued, "and told the Lord, my father. He came forth.
Did he kill them? I did not look to learn."

"Yes. They lie in the lake, all except three whom he sent away as
messengers."

"I thought so. Death is terrible, O Humphrey, but it is a sword which
those who rule must use to smite the wicked and the savage."

Not wishing to pursue this subject, I asked her what her father was
doing with the metal plates.

"He reads the stars," she answered, "to learn how long we have been
asleep. Before we went to sleep he made two pictures of them, as
they were then and as they should be at the time he had set for our
awakening."

"We set that time," interrupted Bickley.

"Not so, O Bickley," she answered, smiling again. "In the divine Oro's
head was the time set. You were the hand that executed his decree."