especially if viewed by moonlight, had the appearance of bearing on
it hundreds or thousands of the arms and hands of men, all of them
stretched imploringly to Heaven.

Well might they seem to do so, seeing that to its naked limbs hung the
bodies of at least twenty human beings who had suffered death by order
of the king or his captains, or by the decree of the company of wizards,
whereof Hokosa was the chief. There on the Hill of Death stood the Tree
of Death; and that in its dank shade, or piled upon the ground beneath
it, hung and lay the pitiful remnants of the multitudes who for
generations had been led thither to their doom.

Now, in Owen's vision a man was seen approaching by the little pathway
that ran up the side of the mount--the Road of Lost Footsteps it was
called. It was Hokosa the wizard. Outside the circle of the tree he
halted, and drawing a tanned skin from a bundle of medicines which he
carried, he tied it about his mouth; for the very smell of that tree is
poisonous and must not be suffered to reach the lungs.

Presently he was under the branches, where once again he halted; this
time it was to gaze at the body of an old man which swung to and fro in
the night breeze.

"Ah! friend," he muttered, "we strove for many years, but it seems that
I have conquered at the last. Well, it is just; for if you could have
had your way, your end would have been my end."

Then very leisurely, as one who is sure that he will not be interrupted,
Hokosa began to climb the tree, till at length some of the green fingers
were within his reach. Resting his back against a bough, one by one he