ow of
the gateway tunnel, for the sun behind us was still low. My word, how
they did stare! A voice cried:

"Kill them! Kill these strangers who desecrate our temple."

"What!" I answered. "Would you kill those to whom your high-priest has
given safe-conduct; those moreover by whose help alone, as your Oracle
has just declared, you can hope to slay Jana and destroy his hosts?"

"How do they know that?" shouted another voice. "They are magicians!"

"Yes," I remarked, "all magic does not dwell in the hearts of the White
Kendah. If you doubt it, go to look at the Watcher in the Cave whom your
Oracle told you is dead. You will find that it did not lie."

As I spoke a man rushed through the gates, his white rob streaming on
the wind, shouting as he emerged from the tunnel:

"O Priests and Priestesses of the Child, the ancient serpent is dead. I
whose office it is to feed the serpent on the day of the new moon have
found him dead in his house."

"You hear," I interpolated calmly. "The Father of Snakes is dead. If you
want to know how, I will tell you. We looked on it and it died."

They might have answered that poor Savage also looked on it with the
result that _he_ died, but luckily it did not occur to them to do so.
On the contrary, they just stood still and stared at us like a flock of
startled sheep.

Presently the sheep parted and the shepherd in the shape of Harut
appeared looking, I reflected, the very picture of Abraham softened by
a touch of the melancholia of Job, that is, as I have always imagined
those patriarchs. He bowed to us with his usual Oriental courtesy, and
we bowed back to him. Hans' bow, I may explain, was of the most peculiar
nature, more like a _skulpat_, as the Boers call a land-tortoise,
drawing its wrinkled head into its shell and putting it out again than
anything else. Then Harut remarked in his peculiar English, which I
suppose the White Kendah took for some tongue known only to magicians:

"So you get here, eh? Why you get here, how the devil you get here, eh?"

"We got here because you asked us to do so if we could," I answered,
"and we thought it rude not to accept your invitation. For the rest, we
came through a cave where you kept a tame snake, an ugly-looking reptile
but very harmless to those who know how to deal with snakes and are not
afraid of them as poor Bena was. If you can spare the skin I should like
to have it to make myself a robe."

Harut looked at me with evident