“Strange,” he said aloud, “that Nature should set the bane and the antidote side by side, the one twined about the other.  Well, so it is in everything; yes, even in the heart of man.  Shall I gather some of this juice also?  No; for then I might repent and save him, remembering that he has loved me, and thus lose her I seek, her whom I must win back or be withered.  Let the messenger of the King of Heaven save him, if he can.  This tree lies on his path; perchance he may prevail upon its dead to tell him of the bane and of the antidote.”  And once more the wizard laughed mockingly.

*****

The vision passed.  At this moment Thomas Owen, recovering from his swoon, lifted his head from the window-place.  The night before him was as black as it had been, and behind him the little American clock was still striking the hour of midnight.  Therefore he could not have remained insensible for longer than a few seconds.

A few seconds, yet how much he had seen in them.  Truly his want of faith had been reproved—­truly he also had been “warned of God in a dream,”—­truly “his ears had been opened and his instruction sealed.”  His soul had been “kept back from the pit,” and his life from “perishing by the sword;” and the way of the wicked had been made clear to him “in a dream, in a vision of the night when deep sleep falleth upon men.”

Not for nothing had he endured that agony, and not for nothing had he struggled in the grip of doubt.

CHAPTER V

THE FEAST OF THE FIRST-FRUITS

On the third morning from this night whereof the strange events have been described, an ox-waggon might have been seen outspanned on the hither side of those ranges of hills that were visible from the river.  These mountains, which although not high are very steep, form the outer barrier and defence of the kingdom of the Amasuka.  Within five hundred yards of where the waggon stood, however, a sheer cliffed gorge, fire-riven and water-hewn, pierced the range, and looking on it, Owen knew it for the gorge of his dream.  Night and day the mouth of it was guarded by a company of armed soldiers, whose huts were built high on outlook places in the mountains, whence their keen eyes could scan the vast expanses of plain.  A full day before it reached them, they had seen the white-capped waggon crawling across the veldt, and swift runners had reported its advent to the king at his Great Place.

Back came the word of the king that the white man, with the waggon and his servant, were to be led on towards the Great Place at such speed as would bring him there in time for him to behold the last ceremony of the feast of first-fruits; but, for the present, that the waggon itself and the oxen were to be left at the mouth of the gorge, in charge of a guard, who would be answerable for them.