But he would talk still--this fellow whose words, as a rule, I
had to take out of his mouth with a fork, as we say; and still on
the same subject, he said that not one person in the village
would expect to see me torture myself; that after what I would do
for them all--after delivering them from a great evil--nothing
further would be expected of me.

I asked him to explain his meaning; for it now began to appear
plain that in everything he had said he had been leading up to
some very important matter. It would, of course, have been a
great mistake to suppose that my savage was offering me a
blow-pipe and a marketable virgin sister from purely
disinterested motives.

In reply he went back to that still unforgotten joke about my
being able eventually to hit a bird as big as a small woman with
an arrow. Out of it all came, when he went on to ask me if that
mysterious girl I had seen in the wood was not of a size to suit
me as a target when I had got my hand in with a little more
practice. That was the great work I was asked to do for
them--that shy, mysterious girl with the melodious wild-bird
voice was the evil being I was asked to slay with poisoned
arrows! This was why he now wished me to go often to the wood,
to become more and more familiar with her haunts and habits, to
overcome all shyness and suspicion in her; and at the proper
moment, when it would be impossible to miss my mark, to plant the
fatal arrow! The disgust he had inspired in me before, when
gloating over anticipated tortures, was a weak and transient
feeling to what I now experienced. I turned on him in a sudden
transport of rage, and in a moment would have shattered on his