your hand to me. I do not own a coin in all the world."

He mumbled something about "force of habit" as he led the way
down towards the door, and I responded tartly enough about the
unpleasantness of his begging customs. "If it were not for your
sort and your customs, the Priests' Clan would not be facing this
crisis to-day."

"One must live," he grumbled, as he pressed his levers, and
the massive stone in the doorway swung ajar.

"If you had been a more capable man, I might have seen the
necessity," said I, and passed into the open and left him. I could
never bring myself to like Ro.

A motley crowd filled the street which ran past the front of
this obscure temple, and all were hurrying one way. With what I
had been told, it did not take much art to guess that the great
stone circle of our Lord the Sun was their mark, and it grieved me
to think of how many venerable centuries that great fane had
upreared before the weather and the earth tremors, without such
profanation as it would witness to-day. And also the thought
occurred to me, "Was our Great Lord above drawing this woman on to
her destruction? Would He take some vast and final act of
vengeance when she consummated her final sacrilege?"

But the crowd pressed on, thrilled and excited, and thinking
little (as is a crowd's wont) on the deeper matters which lay
beneath the bare spectacle. From one quarter of the city walls the
din of an attack from the besiegers made itself clearly heard from