“It cannot be,” he cried, “or you can name her whom you accuse.”

“Be silent!” Esmo said, in the cold, grave tone of a president rebuking disorder, mingled with the deeper displeasure of a priest repressing irreverence in the midst of the most solemn religious rite.  “None may speak here till the Chiefs have ceased to speak.”

None of the latter, however, seemed disposed to ask another question.  The guilt of the accused was confessed.  All that he could tell to guide their further inquiries had been told.  To doubt that what was forced from him was to the best of his knowledge true, was to them, who understood the mysterious power that had compelled the spirit and the lips to an unwilling confession, impossible.  And if it had seemed that further information might have been extracted relative to my own personal danger, a stronger tie, a deeper obligation, bound them to the supposed object of the last obscure imputation, and none was willing to elicit further charges or clearer evidence.  Probably also they anticipated that, when the word was extended to the Initiates, I should take up my own cause.

“Would any brother speak?” asked Esmo, when the silence of the Chiefs had lasted for a few moments.

But his rebuke had silenced Kevima, and no one else cared to interpose.  The eyes of the assembly turned upon me so generally and so pointedly, that at last I felt myself forced, though against my own judgment, to rise.

“I have no question to ask the accused,” I said.

“Then,” replied Esmo calmly, “you have nothing now to say.  Give to the brother accused before us the cup of rest.”

A small goblet was handed by one of the sentries to the miserable creature, now half-insensible, who awaited our judgment.  In a very few moments he had sunk into a slumber in which his face was comparatively calm, and his limbs had ceased to tremble.  His fate was to be debated in the presence indeed of his body, but in the absence of consciousness and knowledge.

“Has any elder brother,” inquired Esmo, “counsel to afford?”

No word was spoken.

“Has any brother counsel to afford?”

Again all were silent, till the glance which the Chief cast in order along the ranks of the assembly fell upon myself.

“One word,” I said.  “I claim permission to speak, because the matter touches closely and cruelly my own honour.”

There was that inaudible, invisible, motionless “movement,” as some French reporters call it, of surprise throughout the assembly which communicates itself instinctively to a speaker.

“My own honour,” I continued, “in the honour dearer and nearer to me even than my own.  What the accused has spoken may or may not be true.”

“It is true,” interposed a Chief, probably pitying my ignorance.