screams of the Merchant Prince's daughter, whose soul was the
diamond's price, and smiled and went stoutly on. There watched him,
apathetically, over the narrow way, that grim and dubious woman whose
house is Night. Thangobrind, hearing no longer the sound of suspicious
feet, felt easier now. He was all but come to the end of the narrow
way, when the woman listlessly uttered that ominous cough.

The cough was too full of meaning to be disregarded. Thangobrind
turned round and saw at once what he feared. The spider-idol had not
stayed at home. The jeweller put his diamond gently upon the ground
and drew his sword called Mouse. And then began that famous fight upon
the narrow way in which the grim old woman whose house was Night
seemed to take so little interest. To the spider-idol you saw at once
it was all a horrible joke. To the jeweller it was grim earnest. He
fought and panted and was pushed back slowly along the narrow way, but
he wounded Hlo-hlo all the while with terrible long gashes all over
his deep, soft body till Mouse was slimy with blood. But at last the
persistent laughter of Hlo-hlo was too much for the jeweller's nerves,
and, once more wounding his demoniac foe, he sank aghast and exhausted
by the door of the house called Night at the feet of the grim old
woman, who having uttered once that ominous cough interfered no
further with the course of events. And there carried Thangobrind the
jeweller away those whose duty it was, to the house where the two men
hang, and taking down from his hook the left-hand of the two, they put
that venturous jeweller in his place; so that there fell on him the
doom that he feared, as all men know though it is so long since, and
there abated somewhat the ire of the envious gods.

And the only daughter of the Merchant Prince felt so little gratitude
for this great deliverance that she took to respectability of the