I took no particular heed of the incident, thinking only that they might have captured some spy, till a murmur of astonishment, and the general stir, warned me that something unusual had occurred.  So I rose from my box and strolled towards the man, who now was hidden from me by a group of Mountaineers.  As I advanced this group opened, the men who composed it bowing to me with a kind of wondering respect that impressed me, I did not know why.

Then for the first time I saw the prisoner.  He was a tall, athletic young man, dressed in festal robes with a heavy gold chain about his neck, and I wondered vaguely what such a person should be doing here in this time of national commotion.  He turned his head so that the moonlight showed his dark eyes, his somewhat oval-shaped face ending in a peaked black beard, and his finely cut features.  In an instant I knew him.

It was my son Roderick!

Next moment, for the first time for very many years, he was in my arms.

The first thing that I remember saying to him was a typically Anglo-Saxon remark, for however much we live in the East or elsewhere, we never really shake off our native conventions, and habits of speech.  It was, “How are you, my boy, and how on earth did you come here?” to which he answered, slowly, it is true, and speaking with a foreign accent: 

“All right, thank you, father.  I ran upon my legs.”

By this time Higgs hobbled up, and was greeting my son warmly, for, of course, they were old friends.

“Thought you were to be married to-night, Roderick?” he said.

“Yes, yes,” he answered, “I am half married according to Fung custom, which counts not to my soul.  Look, this is the dress of marriage,” and he pointed to his fine embroidered robe and rich ornaments.

“Then, where’s your wife?” asked Higgs.

“I do not know and I do not care,” he answered, “for I did not like that wife.  Also it is all nothing as I am not quite married to her.  Fung marriage between big people takes two days to finish, and if not finished does not matter.  So she marry some one else if she like, and I too.”

“What happened then?” I asked.

“Oh, this, father.  When we had eaten the marriage feast, but before we past before priest, suddenly we hear a thunder and see a pillar of fire shoot up into sky, and sitting on top of it head of Harmac, which vanish into heaven and stop there.  Then everybody jump up and say: 

“’Magic of white man!  Magic of white man!  White man kill the god who sit there from beginning of world, now day of Fung finished according to prophecy.  Run away, people of Fung, run away!’