their cases decided before the council of gilds, as was first intended?'
'Held in the power of Nacoc-Yaotl?' demanded the other scornfully. 'No!'
'Held in personal charge by the guardians,' substituted Biornson patiently. 'They will do this thing, I believe, for the sake of peace in Tlapallan.'
'You are right, my lord Svend.' The giant who had spoken before pushed Maxatla gently but firmly aside and laid his own enormous hand on Boots. 'This is for the council to decide. We, Guardians of the Hills, and Keepers of the Peace of Tlapallan, take these two prisoners in our keeping. Do I speak well, my brothers?'
'You speak well,' confirmed his five companions, and their voices, soft and murmurous as the night-wind, carried a decision that no man there dared question.
In a fold of the hills, a dim, twilight valley, where the verdure grew scant and starved between scattered boulders, a group of men had halted.
Though the sky was black above, the valley was grayly visible in what seemed a perpetual and never- growing dawn. It was the light of invisible Tlapallan, reflected and diffused from the rocks at the valley's entrance.
Scarcely an hour had elapsed since the prisoners passed into the guardians' charge. Carried ashore in the latter's low black boat, instead of being escorted to another prison, they were brought here. After disembarking, the whole company turned their faces to the hills, and only halted again when shut from the glittering lake by the walls of this desolate valley.
There was a foreboding of secret evil in the manner of all their keepers.
By Biornson's first words, the suspicion was no idle one.
'You saved my life, O'Hara, but I would rather have died than seen this feud reopened. You think it a light matter. A few lives lost, perhaps, and a few heads broken-the sort of riot-play you Irish delight in. But Donnybrook Fair is not so far from Tlapallan as the ways of its people from your ways.
'Nacoc-Yaotl has horrors in command beyond all thinking by one who has not seen his power. The Feathered Serpent will fight fire with fire, and even the lesser gilds control forces that, if turned loose on the world, might almost wreck civilization. Only the delicate counterbalance of power and certain religious traditions have kept Tlapallan from long ago destroying itself. But I know that Nacoc-Yaotl grows restive —
'Nacoc-Yaotl,' continued Biornson in a changed voice, 'would dwell in peace with the other gods, and to drive him into anger is folly. Therefore you, O'Hara, must leave Tlapallan. Quetzalcoatl has no possible claim on your mate, and the council will give him up to the priests whose mysteries he has pried into. But over you there would surely be fighting. Young Maxatla stands high in our gild, and having once claimed you he will never draw back. So you must-escape tonight, friend O'Hara.
'Will you believe me when I say that to save these adopted people of mine-and to prevent another possible thing I can't speak of-I would condemn myself as readily as you?
'You will be taken blindfold far out into the desert, left so bound that by effort you may free yourself, and the rest-will be between you and the drifting sands.'
'Food and drink?'
'If you can find them. Goodby, O'Hara, and though you won't believe it-I am sorry.'
'Goodby,' said Boots curtly, and as he felt himself gripped by two of his warders, he turned to go without another word of farewell.
But at that Kennedy came to life with a sudden vain leap against the hands that instantly restrained him. Struggling desperately, he called. after his mate as he had called in the desert, his voice like a wailing cry:
'Don't leave me, Boots! Don't leave me with these fiends! If you leave me it will be worse than murder- worse, do you understand? I will tell you what I saw-I will tell you — '
The cry died as a heavy hand closed over his mouth, and he could only watch with agonized eyes as his mate was led helplessly away.
CHAPTER X. The First Visitation
'CLIONA, my dear, 'tis a quaint-looking present I've brought you, but they do say it's worth a power of money for its rarity. The value I put on it, though, is another sort. There's a tale behind it so wild I'd not tell it to even you, little sister, lest you think me a liar of outrageous imaginations.'
Colin O'Hara passed his fingers reflectively over the polished bit of colored porcelain in his hand. Fifteen years had elapsed since first he set eyes on it, when his trail-mate had lifted it down from the bracket in Biornson's hacienda.
Those years had left no mark on the porcelain godling but they had wrought their inevitable changes in the man. The face that at twenty was broadly good-humored was good-humored still. But the blurred lines of youth had set to a deeper firmness, the lips could be stern as well as smiling, and the light-blue, kindly eyes were capable of flaring into anger as intolerant as was promised by the red thatch of hair above them. In both size and appearance the contrast between the man and the girl he had just addressed was striking to the point of absurdity.
Colin's height missed the seven-foot mark by a bare four inches, while Cliona O'Hara Rhodes, his young married sister, measured no more than five feet five. Her raven's-wing hair shadowed eyes that were wonderfully blue; from beneath straight, fine brows the lashes curved thick and long, and her skin had the tint of one of those small seashells that are like smooth, new ivory shading a to a center so delicate that to call it pink is almost desecration-say, rather, angel-color.
Yet a resemblance to her brother might have been traced in the girl's generous forehead, the carriage of her head, and certain inbred mannerisms of speech and gesture.
Since the death of her parents, when Cliona was a very small child, this huge, rugged man had been her whole family and sole guardian. Many of those years he had spent world-wandering; yet he had ever kept in touch with his little sister, given her a convent education, and to this day she had all the love of his great, affectionate heart.
Now they sat together on a stone bench in the gardens that surrounded her bungalow home at Carpentier, a small suburb just within the wide-flung boundary line of a city in the eastern part of the United States.
As he fell silent she tapped an impatient foot on the gravel path.
'Had I guessed where you were off to when you left me six months ago, Colin, I should have kept you here or gone after you!'
'Ah, now,' he protested, 'am I not back safe and sound? 'Twas for that very reason I said nothing of it. With you just married and all, would I be spoiling your honeymoon with anxieties? Not that the danger was worth speaking of, but I guessed how you'd fret. And this journey was one I've had in the back of my head a-many years. Always there's been one thing or another risen to prevent. It seemed like fate was set against in ever learning the truth of the matter, and now-now I'm less sure than before I went if 'twas all a dream and a fevered vision or a sober reality!'
'Tell me the story.' Cliona took the porcelain Quetzalcoatl in her hands and examined it curiously. Though about it there was an indefinable look of age, its unglazed, polished enamel might have left the potter's hands but yesterday. From the delicately indicated embroidery of the tunic to the minute scaling of the serpent-headed staff it held, it was an exquisite bit of craftsmanship. The flat, benignant face eyed her with a kind of patient stoicism that brought a smile to Cliona's lips.
'Poor little idol-man!' she said whimsically. 'Are all your worshipers dead and gone? Tell me the story, Colin.'
'If I do, you'll neither repeat it to another nor think it a fabrication?'
'Colin!'
'I know, but when I've finished you may 'Colin' me in another tone, my dear! It strains my own belief to think of it, and I'm not sure-not sure at all-to go back and find naught but a lake so deep there was no fathoming it; to find but the ruins of the hacienda, and they so overgrown one could scarce identify them, and only certain scars I bear to this day and the bit of image you hold in your hands as an evidence that 'twas not quite all a delusion! They and the name of Svend Biornson.
