“Effinghame, my dear fellow, I know you have read Renan.  If Renan had seen the communication on this iron fan, he would have never written his life of the Messiah.”  His eyes blazed.

“Why, what do you mean?”

“I mean that it might have been a life of Judas Iscariot.”

“Good God, man, are you joking?” ejaculated Effinghame.

“I mean,” sternly pursued Arn, “that if De Quincey had studied this identical fan, the opium-eater would have composed another gorgeous rhetorical plea for the man preelected to betray his Saviour, the apostle who spilt the salt.”  He sat down and breathed heavily.

“Go on!  Go on!”

“Shall I relate the history upon the fan?” And without waiting for an answer he began at the left of the fan and slowly read to the right:—­

I who write this am called Moa the Bonze.  What I write of I witnessed in a walled city of Judea.  I travelled there attracted by the report of miraculous happenings brought about by the magic art of a youthful barbarian called Ieshua.  The day I arrived in the city they had sentenced the wise man to death by crucifixion.  I was disappointed.  I had come many moons and many leagues from the Yellow Kingdom to see something rare.  I was too late.  The magician, whom his disciples called a god, had been executed.  I tarried a few days in the city.  After many questions put to beggars and outcasts, I heard that a certain woman of rank had a portrait of Ieshua.  I called and without hesitation asked her to show me this picture.  She was an exalted soul.  She wept bitter tears as she drew from a secret cabinet a scarf upon which was imprinted a bloody image.  She continued to weep as I made a copy of the head.  I confess I was not impressed.  The face was bearded and ugly.  The new god was said to have been as fair as the sun.  And I told the woman this.  She only wept the more.

     “If he were a god,” I asked, “where are outward evidences?” She
     became frantic.

“The real man!” she cried; “this one died for the man he betrayed,” and again fell to lamenting.  Seeing I could gain nothing more from her, I left, wondering at the strange heretics I had encountered.  I went back to my country and after weaving this tale and painting the head, there awaited the fifth Buddha, the successor to Siddartha, whose coming has been predicted.

Arn’s voice ceased.  There was silence in the chamber.  Then Effinghame started up and fiercely growled:—­

“What do you make of it, Arn?”

“Isn’t it clear enough?  There’s been a frightful error somewhere, one of incalculable consequences.  A tremendous act of heroism has been committed by a man whose name has been universally execrated through the ages.  Perhaps he repented at the eleventh hour and by some means impersonated his betrayed friend; perhaps—­”

“But that other body found in the blasted field of Aceldama!” demanded the agitated Effinghame.  Dr. Arn did not answer.