“Is the ghost of Umsuka among them?”

“It is among them.”

“Bid him prophesy the future to me.”

“I have bidden him, but he does not answer.  If you would hear him speak, it must be through the lips of my body; and first my body must be emptied of my ghost, that his may find a place therein.”

“Say, can his spirit be compelled?”

“It can be compelled, or that part of it which still hover near this spot, if you dare to speak the words you know.  But first its house must be made ready.  Then the words must be spoken, and all must be done before a man can count three hundred; for should the blood begin to clot about my heart, it will be still for ever.”

“Hearken,” said Hokosa.  “When the medicine that I shall give does its work, and the spirit is loosened from your body, let it not go afar, no, whatever tempts or threatens it, and suffer not that the death-cord be severed, lest flesh and ghost be parted for ever.”

“I hear, and I obey.  Be swift, for I grow weary.”

Then Hokosa took from his pouch two medicines:  one a paste in a box, the other a fluid in a gourd.  Taking of the paste he knelt upon the grave before the entranced woman and swiftly smeared it upon the mucous membrane of the mouth and throat.  Also he thrust pellets of it into the ears, the nostrils, and the corners of the eyes.

The effect was almost instantaneous.  A change came over the girl’s lovely face, the last awful change of death.  Her cheeks fell in, her chin dropped, her eyes opened, and her flesh quivered convulsively.  The wizard saw it all by the bright moonlight.  Then he took up his part in this unholy drama.

All that he did cannot be described, because it is indescribable.  The Witch of Endor repeated no formula, but she raised the dead; and so did Hokosa the wizard.  But he buried his face in the grey dust of the grave, he blew with his lips into the dust, he clutched at the dust with his hands, and when he raised his face again, lo! it was grey like the dust.  Now began the marvel; for, though the woman before him remained a corpse, from the lips of that corpse a voice issued, and its sound was horrible, for the accent and tone of it were masculine, and the instrument through which it spoke—­Noma’s throat—­was feminine.  Yet it could be recognised as the voice of Umsuka the dead king.

“Why have you summoned me from my rest, Hokosa?” muttered the voice from the lips of the huddled corpse.

“Because I would learn the future, Spirit of the king,” answered the wizard boldly, but saluting as he spoke.  “You are dead, and to your sight all the Gates are opened.  By the power that I have, I command you to show me what you see therein concerning myself, and to point out to me the path that I should follow to attain my ends and the ends of her in whose breast you dwell.”

At once the answer came, always in the same horrible voice:—­