s, and little piles of tiny earthenware saucers; to
his left was tethered a black kid, which lay contentedly upon a heap of
dying flowers; near it was what appeared to be a miniature guillotine
stained almost black; and above his head, in front of him and hanging
from a hook in a huge, upstanding block of granite, glittered, a short,
needle-pointed knife.

One knife?

Nay! two, three, a dozen, scores, thousands, thousands of glittering
knives whirled around his head; and hundreds of goats grinned from
corners and capered about his feet, and millions of evil eyes winked at
him from the dusky shadows; and voices rose in choirs, male and female
voices, whispering, laughing, singing. Louder, still louder, rising
like some all-conquering flood, while silver anklets clashed until the
brain was nigh to splitting with the din.

He must see, he _must_ see, and watch the women who laughed shrilly and
often; he must see the front of that great block of stone which barred
his way to Leonie. Yes! Of course that was it, just that one great
block of stone which kept him from his love.

Jan Cuxson made a mighty effort to move his heathen foot over the inch
of threshold which separated him from the holy place. His breath came
in gasps, and the veins stood out in knots upon his forehead as he
pushed with both hands at the empty air; he fought like a mad dog to
overcome that mighty force arrayed against him which neither advanced
nor retreated, but was just _there_.

Then as something out of the void struck him cruelly between the eyes
he gave a mighty shout which made no sound at all, and fell with a
crash, scattering the brass vessels and tiny earthenware saucers to the
four corners of the space around the altar.

Sunstroke?--well, _hardly_.

Because the next morning, when he awoke with the hide thongs fastening
him by the wrist and the waist to the ring in the wall, he felt fit,
and fresh, and extremely wide awake.

Perhaps it was that the blow, or whatever had struck Jan Cuxson down on
the threshold of the temple, had served to sharpen his wits; anyway,
for some unknown reason, words uttered by the priest on the first day
of his imprisonment began to repeat themselves over and over again in
his brain, as he sat uncomfortably with his back to the wall and his
eyes fixed with a certain crafty understanding upon a piece of rusty
metal half hidden under a fallen brick.

Wherefore he wheedled and cajoled when the priest came