ry proud, awaiting praise from the Neelands, father and
son.

Neeland senior "drew" the bird and distributed the sacrifice
impartially between both dogs--it being the custom of the country.

Neeland junior broke his gun, replaced the exploded shell, content
indeed with his one hundred per cent performance.

"Better run over and speak to the little girl, Jim," suggested old
Dick Neeland, as he motioned the dogs into covert again.

So Jim ran lightly across the stony, clover-set ground to where the
little girl roamed along the old snake fence, picking berries
sometimes, sometimes watching the sportsmen out of shy, golden-grey
eyes.

"Little girl," he said, "I'm afraid the shot from my gun came rattling
rather close to you that time. You'll have to be careful. I've noticed
you here before. It won't do; you'll have to keep out of range of
those bushes, because when we're inside we can't see exactly where
we're firing."

The child said nothing. She looked up at the boy, smiled shyly, then,
with much composure, began her retreat, not neglecting any tempting
blackberry on the way.

The sun hung low over the hazy Gayfield hills; the beeches and oaks of
Mohawk County burned brown and crimson; silver birches supported their
delicate canopies of burnt gold; and imperial white pines clothed hill
and vale in a stately robe of green.

Jim Neeland forgot the child--or remembered her only to exercise
caution in the Brookhollow covert.

The little girl Ruhannah, who had once fidgeted with prickly heat in
her mother's arms outside the walls of Trebizond, did not forget this
easily smiling, tall young fellow--a grown man to her--who had come
across the pasture lot to warn her.

But it was many a day before they met again, though these two also had
been born under the invisible shadow of the Dark Star. But the shadow
of Erlik is always passing like swift lightning across the Phantom
Planet which has fled the other way since Time was born.

_Allahou Ekber, O Tchinguiz Khagan!_

A native Mongol missionary said to Ruhannah's father:

"As the chronicles of the Eighurs have it, long ago there fell metal
from the Black Racer of the skies; the first dagger was made of it;
and the first image of the Prince of Darkness. These pass from Kurd to
Cossack by theft, by gift, by loss; they pass from nation to nation by
accident, which is Divine design.

"And where they remain, war is. And lasts until image and dagger are
carried to ano