ed the spirits which ruled the sun and the moon,
and through them the world. This, said Ragnall, was just a piece of
Egyptian theology, preserved down to our own times in a remote corner
of Africa, doubtless by descendants of dwellers on the Nile who had been
driven thence in some national catastrophe, and brought away with them
their faith and one of the effigies of their gods. Perhaps they fled at
the time of the Persian invasion by Cambyses.

After we had emerged from this deeply interesting shrine, which was
locked behind us, Harut led us, not through the passage connecting it
with the stone house that we knew was occupied by Ragnall's wife in her
capacity as Guardian of the Child, or a latter-day personification of
Isis, Lady of the Moon, at which house he cast many longing glances, but
back through the two courts and the pylon to the gateway of the temple.
Here on the road by which we had entered the place, a fact which we did
not mention to him, he paused and addressed us.

"Lords," he said, "now you and the People of the White Kendah are one;
your ends are their ends, your fate is their fate, their secrets are
your secrets. You, Lord Igeza, work for a reward, namely the person of
that lady whom we took from you on the Nile."

"How did you do that?" interrupted Ragnall when I had interpreted.

"Lord, we watched you. We knew when you came to Egypt; we followed you
in Egypt, whither we had journeyed on our road to England once more to
seek our Oracles, till the day of our opportunity dawned. Then at night
we called her and she obeyed the call, as she must do whose mind we have
taken away--ask me not how--and brought her to dwell with us, she who
is marked from her birth with the holy sign and wears upon her breast
certain charmed stones and a symbol that for thousands of years have
adorned the body of the Child and those of its Oracles. Do you remember
a company of Arabs whom you saw riding on the banks of the Great River
on the day before the night when she was lost to you? We were with that
company and on our camels we bore her thence, happy and unharmed to this
our land, as I trust, when all is done, we shall bear her back again and
you with her."

"I trust so also, for you have wrought me a great wrong," said Ragnall
briefly, "perhaps a greater wrong than I know at present, for how came
it that my boy was killed by an elephant?"

"Ask that question of Jana and not of me," Harut answered darkly. Then
he we