“Those fools do not remember that when pressed by dogs the hare often doubles on its own spoor, and that your reverend father will be very pleased if I can play them the same trick with the white lady that they played with the Lord Igeza.”

I only looked at him in reply, since the morality of Hans was past argument.  It might perhaps be summed up in one sentence:  To get the better of his neighbour in his master’s service, honestly if possible; if not, by any means that came to his hand down to that of murder.  At the bottom of his dark and mysterious heart Hans worshipped only one god, named Love, not of woman or child, but of my humble self.  His principles were those of a rather sly but very high-class and exclusive dog, neither better nor worse.  Still, when all is said and done, there are lower creatures in the world than high-class dogs.  At least so the masters whom they adore are apt to think, especially if their watchfulness and courage have often saved them from death or disaster.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE EMBASSY

The ceremonies were over and the priests, with the exception of Harut and two who remained to attend upon him, vanished, probably to inform the male and female hierophants of their result, and through these the whole people of the White Kendah.  Old Harut stared at us for a little while, then said in English, which he always liked to talk when Ragnall was present, perhaps for the sake of practice: 

“What you like do now, eh?  P’r’aps wish fly back to Town of Child, for suppose this how you come.  If so, please take me with you, because that save long ride.”

“Oh! no,” I answered.  “We walked here through that hole where lived the Father of Snakes who died of fear when he saw us, and just mixed with the rest of you in the court of the temple.”

“Good lie,” said Harut admiringly, “very first-class lie!  Wonder how you kill great snake, which we all think never die, for he live there hundred, hundred years; our people find him there when first they come to this country, and make him kind of god.  Well, he nasty beast and best dead.  I say, you like see Child?  If so, come, for you our brothers now, only please take off hat and not speak.”

I intimated that we should “like see Child,” and led by Harut we entered the little sanctuary which was barely large enough to hold all of us.  In a niche of the end wall stood the sacred effigy which Ragnall and I examined with a kind of reverent interest.  It proved to be the statue of an infant about two feet high, cut, I imagine, from the base of a single but very large elephant’s tusk, so ancient that the yellowish ivory had become rotten and was covered with a multitude of tiny fissures.  Indeed, for its appearance I made up my mind that several thousands of years must have passed since the beast died from which this ivory was taken, especially as it had, I presume, always been carefully preserved under cover.