He moved forward.  A few steps took him to the doorway.  The chamber before him was darker than the corridor, so that he could just indistinctly make out the objects in the room.  He saw a sleeping dais near the center, with a darker blotch of something lying on the marble floor beside it.  He moved a step farther into the doorway and the scabbard of his sword scraped against the stone frame.  To his horror he saw the sleeping silks and furs upon the central dais move.  He saw a figure slowly arising to a sitting posture from the death bed of O-Mai the Cruel.  His knees shook, but he gathered all his moral forces, and gripping his sword more tightly in his trembling fingers prepared to leap across the chamber upon the horrid apparition.  He hesitated just a moment.  He felt eyes upon him—­ghoulish eyes that bored through the darkness into his withering heart—­eyes that he could not see.  He gathered himself for the rush—­and then there broke from the thing upon the couch an awful shriek, and O-Tar sank senseless to the floor.

Gahan rose from the couch of O-Mai, smiling, only to swing quickly about with drawn sword as the shadow of a noise impinged upon his keen ears from the shadows behind him.  Between the parted hangings he saw a bent and wrinkled figure.  It was I-Gos.

“Sheathe your sword, Turan,” said the old man.  “You have naught to fear from I-Gos.”

“What do you here?” demanded Gahan.

“I came to make sure that the great coward did not cheat us.  Ey, and he called me ‘doddering fool;’ but look at him now!  Stricken insensible by terror, but, ey, one might forgive him that who had heard your uncanny scream.  It all but blasted my own courage.  And it was you, then, who moaned and screamed when the chiefs came the day that I stole Tara from you?”

“It was you, then, old scoundrel?” demanded Gahan, moving threateningly toward I-Gos.

“Come, come!” expostulated the old man; “it was I, but then I was your enemy.  I would not do it now.  Conditions have changed.”

“How have they changed?  What has changed them?” asked Gahan.

“Then I did not fully realize the cowardice of my jeddak, or the bravery of you and the girl.  I am an old man from another age and I love courage.  At first I resented the girl’s attack upon me, but later I came to see the bravery of it and it won my admiration, as have all her acts.  She feared not O-tar, she feared not me, she feared not all the warriors of Manator.  And you!  Blood of a million sires! how you fight!  I am sorry that I exposed you at The Fields of Jetan.  I am sorry that I dragged the girl Tara back to O-Tar.  I would make amends.  I would be your friend.  Here is my sword at your feet,” and drawing his weapon I-Gos cast it to the floor in front of Gahan.

The Gatholian knew that scarce the most abandoned of knaves would repudiate this solemn pledge, and so he stooped, and picking up the old man’s sword returned it to him, hilt first, in acceptance of his friendship.