You will find that it did not lie." As I spoke a man rushed through the gates, his white rob streaming on the wind, shouting as he emerged from the tunnel: "O Priests and Priestesses of the Child, the ancient serpent is dead.

I whose office it is to feed the serpent on the day of the new moon have found him dead in his house." "You hear," I interpolated calmly.

"The Father of Snakes is dead.

If you want to know how, I will tell you.

We looked on it and it died." They might have answered that poor Savage also looked on it with the result that _he_ died, but luckily it did not occur to them to do so.
On the contrary, they just stood still and stared at us like a flock of startled sheep.
Presently the sheep parted and the shepherd in the shape of Harut appeared looking, I reflected, the very picture of Abraham softened by a touch of the melancholia of Job, that is, as I have always imagined those patriarchs.