it seemed to me
that his eyes were fixed upon our guide, as ours were. While he spoke,
I saw her hand raised, as she had raised it when she slew or rather
sentenced the witchdoctor. Then she seemed to reflect, and stayed it in
mid air, so that it pointed at the Khania. She did not move, she made
no sound, only she pointed, and, the angry words died upon Atene's lips,
the fury left her eyes, and the colour her face. Yes, she grew white
and silent as the corpse upon the bier behind her. Then, cowed by that
invisible power, she struck her horse so fiercely that it bounded by us
onward towards the village, at which the funeral company were to rest
awhile.

As the Shaman Simbri followed the Khania, the priest Oros caught his
horse's bridle and said to him--"Magician, we have met before, for
instance, when your lady's father was brought to his funeral. Warn her,
then, you that know something of the truth and of her power to speak
more gently of the ruler of this land. Say to her, from me, that had she
not been the ambassadress of death, and, therefore, inviolate, surely
ere now she would have shared her husband's bier. Farewell, tomorrow we
will speak again," and, loosing the Shaman's bridle, Oros passed on.

Soon we had left the melancholy procession behind us and, issuing from
the gorge, turned up the Mountain slope towards the edge of the bright
snows that lay not far above. It was as we came out of this darksome
valley, where the overhanging pine trees almost eclipsed the light, that
suddenly we missed our guide.

"Has she gone back to--to reason with the Khania?" I asked of Oros.

"Nay!" he answered, with a slight smile, "I think that she has gone
forward to give warning that the Hesea's guests draw near."

"Indeed," I answered, staring hard at the bare slope of mountain,
up which not a mouse could have passed without being seen. "I
understand--she has gone forward," and the matter dropped. But what
I did _not_ understand was--how she had gone. As the Mountain was
honeycombed with caves and galleries, I suppose, however, that she
entered one of them.

All the rest of that day we marched upwards, gradually drawing nearer to
the snow-line, as we went gathering what information we could from the
priest Oros. This was the sum of it--From the beginning of the world,
as he expressed it, that is, from thousands and thousands of years ago,
this Mountain had been the home of a peculiar fire-worship, of which the
head heir