VII

THE GOING


'Tis several years since last I faced this machine, many and many a day
since I said that my story was done, and placed the record on the shelf
of my anteroom, my heart full of satisfaction. And today I must needs
add another record, perhaps two, to the pile.

When I set out for the highlands on the morn following what I last
related I took with me but two or three men; not that I had any need for
guards, but because it looketh not well for the emperor to travel
without retainers, however few. Practically, I was alone.

I reached the locality as the sun went down. The sky was a brilliant
color; I remember it well. Darkness would come soon, though not as
quickly as farther south. Commonly, I think not upon such trifles; but I
were nearing my love, and tender things came easily to my mind.

My chariot kept to the road which lay alongside the irrigating flume, a
stone trough which runs from the snow-covered hills to the dry country
below. I had already noted this flume where it emptied into the basin in
the valley below; for it had had a new kind of a spillway affixed to it,
a broad, smooth platform with a slightly upward curve, over which the
water was shooting. I saw no sense in the arrangement, and made up my
mind to ask Maka about it; for the empire prized this trough most