MacIan came out the next morning into the little garden to a fresh
silver day, his long face looking more austere than ever in that
cold light, his eyelids a little heavy. He carried one of the swords.
Turnbull was in the little house behind him, demolishing the end of
an early breakfast and humming a tune to himself, which could be heard
through the open window. A moment or two later he leapt to his feet and
came out into the sunlight, still munching toast, his own sword stuck
under his arm like a walking-stick.

Their eccentric host had vanished from sight, with a polite gesture,
some twenty minutes before. They imagined him to be occupied on
some concerns in the interior of the house, and they waited for his
emergence, stamping the garden in silence--the garden of tall, fresh
country flowers, in the midst of which the monstrous South Sea idol
lifted itself as abruptly as the prow of a ship riding on a sea of red
and white and gold.

It was with a start, therefore, that they came upon the man himself
already in the garden. They were all the more startled because of the
still posture in which they found him. He was on his knees in front
of the stone idol, rigid and motionless, like a saint in a trance or
ecstasy. Yet when Turnbull's tread broke a twig, he was on his feet in a
flash.

"Excuse me," he said with an irradiation of smiles, but yet with a kind
of bewilderment. "So sorry...family prayers...old fashioned...mother's
knee. Let us go on to the lawn behind."

And he ducked rapidly round the statue to an open space of grass on the
other side of it.

"This will do us best, Mr. MacIan," said he. Then he made a gesture
towards the heavy stone figure on the pedestal which had now its blank
and shapeless back turned towards them. "Don't you be afraid," he added,
"he can still see us."

MacIan turned his blue, blinking eyes, which seemed still misty with
sleep (or sleeplessness) towards the idol, but his brows drew together.

The little man with the long hair also had his eyes on the back view
of the god. His eyes were at once liquid and burning, and he rubbed his
hands slowly against each other.

"Do you know," he said, "I think he can see us better this way. I often
think that this blank thing is his real face, watching, though it cannot
be watched. He! he! Yes, I think he looks nice from behind. He looks
more cruel from behind, don't you think?"

"What the devil is the thing?" asked Turnbull gruffly.

"It