In its issues this half-faith of his had been sufficiently real to induce him to accept Otter and Juanna when they arrived mysteriously in the land.
It had been prophesied that they should arrive thus--that was a fact; and their outward appearance exactly fitted every detail of the prophecy--that was another fact; and these two facts together seemed to point to a conclusion so irresistible that, shrewd and experienced as he was, Nam, was unable to set it down to mere coincidence.

Therefore in the first rush of his religious enthusiasm he had accorded a hearty welcome to the incarnations of the divinities whom for some eighty years he had worshipped as powers spiritual.
But though pious zeal had much to do with this action, as Olfan informed Juanna, it was not devoid of worldly motives.

He desired the glory of being the discoverer of the gods, he desired also the consolidation of the rule which his cruelties had shaken, that must result from their advent.
All this was well enough, but he had never even dreamed that the first step of these new-born divinities would be to discard the ancient ceremonial without which his office would become a sinecure and his power a myth, and even to declare an active hostility against himself.
Were they or were they not gods?
This was the question that exercised his mind.

If there was truth in prophesies they should be gods.

On the other hand he could discover nothing particularly divine about their persons, characters, or attributes--that is to say, nothing sufficiently divine to deceive Nam himself, whatever impression they produced upon the vulgar.