But perhaps among all those gathered before him there were none more deeply interested than Hokosa and one other, that woman to whom he had sold the poison, and who, as it chanced, sat next to him.  Hokosa, watching her face as he was skilled to do, saw the thrusts of the preacher go home, and grew sure that already in her jealous haste she had found opportunity to sprinkle the medicine upon her rival’s food.  She believed it to be but a charm indeed, yet knowing that in using such charms she had done wickedly, she trembled beneath the words of denunciation, and rising at length, crept from the chapel.

“Truly, her sin will find her out,” thought Hokosa to himself, and then in a strange half-impersonal fashion he turned his thoughts to the consideration of his own case.  Would his sin find him out? he wondered.  Before he could answer that question, it was necessary first to determine whether or no he had committed a sin.  The man before him—­that gentle and yet impassioned man—­bore in his vitals the seed of death which he, Hokosa, had planted there.  Was it wrong to have done this?  It depended by which standard the deed was judged.  According to his own code, the code on which he had been educated and which hitherto he had followed with exactness, it was not wrong.  That code taught the necessity of self-aggrandisement, or at least and at all costs the necessity of self-preservation.  This white preacher stood in his path; he had humiliated him, Hokosa, and in the end, either of himself or through his influences, it was probable that he would destroy him.  Therefore he must strike before in his own person he received a mortal blow, and having no other means at his command, he struck through treachery and poison.

That was his law which for many generations had been followed and respected by his class with the tacit assent of the nation.  According to this law, then, he had done no wrong.  But now the victim by the altar, who did not know that already he was bound upon the altar, preached a new and a very different doctrine under which, were it to be believed, he, Hokosa, was one of the worst of sinners.  The matter, then, resolved itself to this:  which of these two rules of life was the right rule?  Which of them should a man follow to satisfy his conscience and to secure his abiding welfare?  Apart from the motives that swayed him, as a mere matter of ethics, this problem interested Hokosa not a little, and he went homewards determined to solve it if he might.  That could be done in one way only—­by a close examination of both systems.  The first he knew well; he had practised it for nearly forty years.  Of the second he had but an inkling.  Also, if he would learn more of it he must make haste, seeing that its exponent in some short while would cease to be in a position to set it out.

“I trust that you will come again,” said Owen to Hokosa as they left the chapel.

“Yes, indeed, Messenger,” answered the wizard; “I will come every day, and if you permit it, I will attend your private teachings also, for I accept nothing without examination, and I greatly desire to study this new doctrine of yours, root and flower and fruit.”