mysterious characters, which the beautiful Priestess perused with
an apparent air of satisfaction. All at once the fiery writing
vanished, the Disc was left black and bare,--and then a silver
ball fell suddenly upon it, with a clang, from some unseen height,
and rolling off again instantly disappeared. At the same moment a
harsh voice, rising as it were from the deepest underground,
chanted the following words in a monotonous recitative:

"Fall, O thou lost Hour, into the dreadful Past! Sink, O thou
Pearl of Time, into the dark and fathomless abyss! Not all the
glory of kings or the wealth of empires can purchase thee back
again! Not all the strength of warriors or the wisdom of sages can
draw thee forth from the Abode of Silence whither thou art fled!
Farewell, lost Hour!--and may the gods defend us from thy reproach
at the Day of Doom! In the name of the Sun and Nagaya, ... Peace!"

The voice died away in a muffled echo, and the slow, solemn boom
of a brazen-tongued bell struck midnight. Then Theos, raising his
eyes, saw that all further progress was impeded by a great wall of
solid rock that glistened at every point with flashes of pale and
dark violet light--a wall composed entirely of adamantine spar,
crusted thick with the rough growth of oriental amethyst. It rose
sheer up from the ground to an altitude of about a hundred feet,
and apparently closed in and completed the vestibule.

Surely there was no passing through such a barrier as this? ... he
thought wonderingly; nevertheless Lysia and Sah-luma still went
on, and he--as perforce he was compelled--still followed. Arrived
at the foot of the huge erection that towered above him like a
steep cliff of molten gems, he fancied he heard a faint sound