“I hope that I shall live,” he answered.  “I am hungry, please give me some food.”

Next instant there was a tumult near by, and when Alan looked up again it was to see Jeekie, very lightly clad, flying through the door.

“It will be here presently,” she said.  “Oh! if you knew what I have suffered, if you only knew.  Now you will recover whom I thought dead, for this fever passes quickly and there shall be such a sacrifice—­no, I forgot, you hate sacrifices—­there shall be no sacrifice, there shall be a thanksgiving, and every woman in the land shall break her bonds to husband or to lover and take him whom she desires without reproach or loss.  I will do as I would be done by, that is the law you taught me, is it not?”

This novel interpretation of a sacred doctrine, worthy of Jeekie himself, so paralyzed Alan’s enfeebled brain that he could make no answer, nor do anything except wonder what would happen in Asiki-land when the decree of its priestess took effect.  Then Jeekie arrived with something to drink which he swallowed with the eagerness of the convalescent and almost immediately went to sleep in good earnest.

Alan’s recovery was rapid, since as the Asika had told him, if a patient lives through it, the kind of fever that he had taken did not last long enough to exhaust his vital forces.  When she asked him if he needed anything to make him well, he answered: 

“Yes, air and exercise.”

She replied that he should have both, and next morning his hated mask was put upon his face and he was supported by priests to a door where a litter, or rather litters were waiting, one for himself and another for Jeekie who, although in robust health, was still supposed to be officially ill and not allowed to walk upon his own legs.  They entered these litters and were borne off till presently they met a third litter of particularly gorgeous design carried by masked bearers, wherein was the Asika herself, wearing her coronet and a splendid robe.

Into this litter, which was fitted with a second seat, Alan was transferred, the Mungana, for whom it was designed, being placed in that vacated by Alan, which either by accident or otherwise, was no more seen that day.  They went up the mountain side and to the edge of the great fall and watched the waters thunder down, though the crest of them they could not reach.  Next they wandered off into the huge forests that clothed the slopes of the hills and there halted and ate.  Then as the sun sank they returned to the gloomy Bonsa-Town beneath them.

For Alan, notwithstanding his weakness and anxieties, it was a heavenly day.  The Asika was passive, some new mood being on her, and scarcely troubled him at all except to call his attention to a tree, a flower, or a prospect of the scenery.  Here on the mountain side, too, the air was sweet, and for the rest—­well, he who had been so near to death, was escaped for an hour from that gloomy home of bloodshed and superstition, and saw God’s sky again.