the chariot wheels of
thunder.

Now the white-draped corpse, the slow-pacing horses, the riders with
their spears reversed, and on either side, seen in that melancholy
moonlight, the women of Kaloon burying their innumerable dead.

And Ayesha herself, yesterday a Valkyrie crested with the star of flame,
to-day but a bereaved woman humbly following her husband to the tomb.

Yet how they feared her! Some widow standing on the grave mould she
had dug, pointed as we passed to the body of Leo, uttering bitter words
which I could not catch. Thereon her companions flung themselves upon
her and felling her with fist and spade, prostrated themselves upon the
ground, throwing dust on their hair in token of their submission to the
priestess of Death.

Ayesha saw them, and said to me with something of her ancient fire and
pride--"I tread the plain of Kaloon no more, yet as a parting gift have
I read this high-stomached people a lesson that they needed long. Not
for many a generation, O Holly, will they dare to lift spear against the
College of Hes and its subject Tribes."

Again it was night, and where once lay that of the Khan, the man whom he
had killed, flanked by the burning pillars, the bier of Leo stood in
the inmost Sanctuary before the statue of the Mother whose gentle,
unchanging eyes seemed to search his quiet face.

On her throne sat the veiled Hesea, giving commands to her priests and
priestesses.

"I am weary," she said, "and it may be that I leave you for a while to
rest--beyond the mountains. A year, or a thousand years--I cannot say.
If so, let Papave, with Oros as her counsellor and husband and their
seed, hold my place till I return again.

"Priests and priestesses of the College of Hes, over new territories
have I held my hand; take them as an heritage from me, and rule them
well and gently. Henceforth let the Hesea of the Mountain be also the
Khania of Kaloon.

"Priests and priestesses of our ancient faith, learn to look through its
rites and tokens, outward and visible, to the in-forming Spirit. If Hes
the goddess never ruled on earth, still pitying Nature rules. If the
name of Isis never rang through the courts of heaven, still in heaven,
with all love fulfilled, nursing her human children on her breast,
dwells the mighty Motherhood where of this statue is the symbol, that
Motherhood which bore us, and, unforgetting, faithful, will receive us
at the end.

"For of the bread of bitterness we shall