Further, behind the sanctuary was a square house with window-places.
At the moment of our first sight of this place the courts were empty, but on the benches of the amphitheatre were seated about three hundred persons, male and female, the men to the north and the women to the south.

They were all clad in pure white robes, the heads of the men being shaved and those of the women veiled, but leaving the face exposed.

Lastly, there were two roadways into the amphitheatre, one running east and one west through tunnels hollowed in the encircling rock of the crater, both of which roads were closed at the mouths of the tunnels by massive wooden double doors, seventeen or eighteen feet in height.

From these roadways and their doors we learned two things.
First, that the cave where had lived the Father of Serpents was, as I had suspected, not the real approach to the shrine of the Child, but only a blind; and, secondly, that the ceremony we were about to witness was secret and might only be attended by the priestly class or families of this strange tribe.
Scarcely was it full daylight when from the cells of the cloisters round the outer court issued twelve priests headed by Harut himself, who looked very dignified in his white garment, each of whom carried on a wooden platter ears of different kinds of corn.

Then from the cells of the southern cloister issued twelve women, or rather girls, for all were young and very comely, who ranged themselves alongside of the men.