“By putting away all dreams of power and its exercise, if such you have, and in repentance walking quietly to the Gates of Death,” I replied.

“For you, Humphrey, who have little or none of these things, that may be easy.  But for me who have much, if not all, it is otherwise.  You ask me to abandon the certain for the uncertain, the known for the unknown, and from a half-god communing with the stars, to become an earthworm crawling in mud and lifting blind eyes towards the darkness of everlasting night.”

“A god who must die is no god, half or whole, Oro; the earthworm that lives on is greater than he.”

“Mayhap.  Yet while I endure I will be as a god, so that when night comes, if come it must, I shall have played my part and left my mark upon this little world of ours.  Have done!” he added with a burst of impatience.  “What will you of my daughter?”

“What man has always willed of woman—­herself, body and soul.”

“Her soul perchance is yours, if she has one, but her body is mine to give or withhold.  Yet it can be bought at a price,” he added slowly.

“So she told me, Oro.”

“I can guess what she told you.  Did I not watch you yonder by the lake when you gave her a ring graved with the signs of Life and Everlastingness?  The question is, will you pay the price?”

“Not so; the question is—­what is the price?”

“This; to enter my service and henceforth do my will—­without debate or cavil.”

“For what reward, Oro?”

“Yva and the dominion of the earth while you shall live, neither more nor less.”

“And what is your will?”

“That you shall learn in due course.  On the second night from this I command the three of you to wait upon me at sundown in the buried halls of Nyo.  Till then you see no more of Yva, for I do not trust her.  She, too, has powers, though as yet she does not use them, and perchance she would forget her oaths, and following some new star of love, for a little while vanish with you out of my reach.  Be in the sepulchre at the hour of sundown on the second day from this, all three of you, if you would continue to live upon the earth.  Afterwards you shall learn my will and make your choice between Yva with majesty and her loss with death.”

Then suddenly he was gone.

Next morning I told the others what had passed, and we talked the matter over.  The trouble was, of course, that Bickley did not believe me.  He had no faith in my alleged interviews with Oro, which he set down to delusions of a semi-mesmeric character.  This was not strange, since it appeared that on the previous night he had watched the door of my sleeping-place until dawn broke, which it did long after Oro had departed, and he had not seen him either come or go, although the moon was shining brightly.

When he told me this I could only answer that all the same he had been there as, if he could speak, Tommy would have been able to certify.  As it chanced the dog was sleeping with me and at the first sound of the approach of someone, woke up and growled.  Then recognising Oro, he went to him, wagged his tail and curled himself up at his feet.