aged Biamite woman appeared and rudely ordered them to leave the island.
Tabus was weak, and refused to see visitors. But she was mistaken; for
when Bias, in the dialect of his tribe, shouted loudly that messengers
from the wife of her grandson Hanno had arrived, there was a movement at
the back of the room, and broken sentences, gasped with difficulty,
expressed the old dame's wish to receive the strangers.

On a sheep's-wool couch, over which was spread a wolfskin, the last gift
of her son Satabus, lay the sorceress, who raised herself as Hermon
passed through the door.

After his greeting, she pointed to her deaf ear and begged him to speak
louder. At the same time she gazed into his eyes with a keen,
penetrating glance, and interrupted him by the question: "The Greek
sculptor whose studio was burned over his head? And blind? Blind
still?"

"In both eyes," Bias answered for his master.

"And you, fellow?" the old dame asked; then, recollecting herself,
stopped the reply on the servant's lips with the hasty remark: "You are
the blackbeard's slave--a Biamite? Oh, I remember perfectly! You
disappeared with the burning house."

Then she gazed intently and thoughtfully from one to the other, and at
last, pointing to Bias, muttered in a whisper: "You alone come from Hanno
and Ledscha, and were with them on the Hydra? Very well. What news have
you for the old woman from the young couple?"

The freedman began to relate what brought him to the Owl's Nest, and the