come face to face with the Last Dark Mystery, what shall our
little wisdom profit us?"

With his arms folded in an attitude of enforced patience and
complacent superiority, the other listened.

"Curious, . . curious!" he murmured in a mild sotto-voce,--"A would-
be pessimist!--aye, aye,--'tis very greatly the fashion for young
men in these days to assume the manner of elderly and exhausted
cynics who have tried everything and approve of nothing! 'Tis a
strange craze!--but, my good sir, let us keep to the subject at
present under discussion. Like all unripe philosophers, you wander
from the point. I did not ask you for your opinion concerning the
uselessness or the efficiency of learning,--I merely sought to
discover whether you, like the silly throng that lately scattered
right and left of you, had any foolish forebodings respecting the
transformed color of this river,--a color which, however seeming
peculiar, arises, as all good scholars know, from causes that are
perfectly simple and easily explainable."

Theos hesitated,--his eyes wandered involuntarily to the flowing
tide, which now with the fully risen sun seemed more than ever
brilliant and lurid in its sanguinary hue.

"Strange things have been said of late concerning Al-Kyris,--" he
answered at last, slowly and after a thoughtful pause,--"Things
that, though wild and vague, are not without certain dark presages
and ominous suggestions. This crimson flood may be, as you say,
the natural effect of purely natural causes,--yet, notwithstanding
this, it seems to me a singular phenomenon--nay, even a weird and