tenders is always to be viewed with suspicion. The first wish of Harpakus was that the Cecropolians should be affaired well; his second was to perform the betterment himself. He had occupied the throne a few years before. He was so preoccupied in the affairs of the citizens that he neglected the soldiery. Cambyzantes was averse to such frivolity and displaced him. It was a question of genealogy, the motive apparent. The family of Cambyzantes had always been represented in the government. The family claimed descent from Vodar; so did Harpakus. It was Prvo who had told Cambyzantes that he had the better claim, on the male side. At this time, Cambyzantes had the better

army.

His reign consisted of demanding extreme crown privileges. These were gradually encroached upon by the nobles, law-givers, constitutions, the Council of the Five Hundred, the Seven Advisers, the Court of Justice, the Assembly of the People, the tirades of demagogues, and other makeshifts of liberty. Cambyzantes sometimes complied with them, sometimes resisted. Frequently he paid no attention to them; and occasionally this was after having promised to do as they requested.

Harpakus was a dignified patriarch with large head and woolly white beard. It was one of his hobbies to be staunch for the rights of the humblest. He was popular, but not magnetically so. However, his military strength was more than Telles Eupator had presumed. Hundreds of citizens were willing to follow him in an emergency. It was also said that he had made a secret pact with Gorlius, the demagogue, and that the latter would, at the needful moment, cast his following with the pretender's. But of these rumors Cambyzantes and Telles and Ixander heard little. To them, it was merely a case of pretenders and demagogues, who usually died in peaceful old age and were forgiven at their funerals. Now and then the suddenness of their deaths caused a profession of horror from the throne and a note of sympathy for the surviving family.

Not far from the scene of these frailties in power was the city of Pergasia. Its king, Perdicor, was most democratic. His ascension to the throne had been

celebrated with an abrogation of all existing debts, the abolition of slavery, a public division of lands, trial courts for all, and many other reformations. Harpakus subsequently drew up a constitution. and codes similar to Perdicor's and published them to the Cecropolians. And he swore by the Vodar Horkios, god of oaths, that he would substantiate his principles immediately upon clapping the crown to his head. The mob applauded these statements, yet made no overt move to fight for them. They returned to their homes and employments, and anon came again to Harpakus, to listen, to mutter, and to applaud. They shouted, "To the spears!" "To the altars!" "Assassination !" And they shouted the louder when the eloquence of Harpakus was finer. In bad weather, there was no demonstration.

Eventually, though, it was noticeable. he had declared himself so often he became aweary and took to the maxims of philosophers. He was majestic and kind to his wife. Once he let a teardrop fall to the brow of his daughter and asked if she still revered him.

On the very afternoon of that night when Anori met Ixander at Pryo's house, Harpakus departed for the city of Pergasia, to seek audience and aid of its king.

Perdicor, when the other's business was made known, entertained him with the war dinner of black blood broth and pork cooked in blood seasoned with vinegar and salt. Then the War Senate of Twelve cast down their swords at the feet of the bronze War God to signify that while these weapons lay there every promise made to Harpakus would be an oath of

war.

Perdicor was wise with that wisdom that only the virtuous possess. For their good intentions lead them to many sorrows that the merely crafty never know. He required a poignant motive giving battle to Cambyzantes. His soldiers would scarcely be interested in the good of the Cecropolians as Harpakus foreordained it. It was left to the ingenuity of Harpakus to force an issue, one that would zealotize the Pergasian troops to the onslaught rather than march them to the word of discipline. However, the war was to be

for the good of the Cecropolians, be the purpose what it would.

Harpakus suggested that it be a religious war. The god Jidon was especially revered in Pergasia as its patron deity. There was a huge gold and ivory statue of Jidon in the Temple of Public Worship at Cecropolias, but one larger and more sumptuous of Vodar. Harpakus was friendly with a subordinate priest of this temple, and would promise him the chief priestship provided he would defile the statue of Jidon and thus insult Perdicor to the pretext of a fantical invasion. After insulting the statue, to the downfall of his monarch, he was to repent and serve the victorious deity.

"And thus," spake Perdicor, "the cities of Cecropolias and Pergasia will be the two flaming eyes of the world, the twin lights worshipped by all mankind as the models of justice and celebrity." (Here he looked at Harpakus.) "And were it not that the intermarriage of royalty breeds confusion of thrones, I should say, let the Prince of Pergasia and the Princess of Cecropolias give you and me our grandchildren in common."

"I am old," replied Harpakus. "I shall have no son. Give me your youngest for my daughter, and let our priests draw up from the oracles a code of dynasty that shall be forever free of quarrel, full of love."

"Let the two meet," said Perdicor, "and I have no doubt that two such choice spirits will find choice in each other."

Then the Senate of Twelve took up their swords and smote the barbaric oaken god of war that had been captured and affixed to the base of their own battle deity.

The next day Harpakus rejourneyed to his city and sped the news to Akon, the priest, whom he charged to confer with Pergasia's sacred body in arrangement of the dynasty.

With high pomp in his imagination and sanctity in his manner, Akon received these negotiations. Upon the next day he set out, a grim, purple-clad figure, with long black hair. The distance was a dim blue, and the road was gray. Slowly the swaying purple, tressed with black, moved along the gray and became dim in the dimmer blue.

Harpakus called his daughter in the

garden. "Anori," he said, "you may yet be a princess of state."

She blushed under her native skies. She had partaken of a confusion of ideas and a confusion of facts within the few days, and which left her in that anomalous mind that is neither free to move nor free to tell of its chains. Surely and yet doubtfully she belonged to Ixander. Yet there was no Ixander beside her as a fact. For a few brief moments beneath the mystic oak, she had spoken to him, and then hurried away with the priest.

Harpakus repeated his statement in a more authoritative tone, as if demanding an answer. Anori, called upon to speak, began as abstractly as possible.

"Yes I have been told."

"Who has known this?" the father asked with surprise.

"Pryo, the priest."

The Pretender raised his brows. Had he been betrayed by Akon to many, or had that chanting numbskull taken only Pryo into his elated confidence?

"And whereof does Pryo know this?" The question was put with seeming indifference.

"He has had it of an ancient oracle," she replied.

It was now the pretender's delightful confusion.

"Pryo oft finds the truth in superstitious ways," he declared.

Further he questioned, to the end that he was informed of the priest's acquaintance with her; but she did not mention Ixander.

In the meanwhile, Akon arrived at Pergasia, went to the altars of that city and conferred with its chief priest, as advised. This dignitary dealt with his visitor already as a conquest of war. He delivered an exact plan for the gods and oracles of Cecropolias when that city should be in the hands of Perdicor. The war was to be remarkable as a triumph of the god Jidon over the god Vodar. The statues and oracles of Vodar were to be made second to those of Jidon. It was Jidon's war. A mightier statue and more impressive than all was to be erected in the highest places. Vodar was to be disrated and gradually classed among the inferior deities.

To this plan. Akon could at first only

vent his astonishment. He had lived and prospered under the tutelage of Vodar. Vodar had been the dominant spirit of the universe. It was Vodar that had established the supremacy of the present hierarchy. All the gods themselves feared Vodar. He was Lord of the Thunderbolt and King of the Heavens. He had but to frown and the skies were overcast. He had but to shake his ambrosial fist at the world and the world was rent with storms and tremblings. Akon had prayed to Vodar, sung to him, fasted for him, feasted in his honor, sacrificed, ceremonied, collected tribute, coveted and retained relics, and even performed miracles in and by the grace of Vodar.

And here now was Jidon thrust upon him. Jidon, in Akon's eyes, had ever been a barbaric substitute, fit for an ignorant, unblessed people, worshiped by the Pergasians, because they knew Vodar's favorite city to be Cecropolias. Had not the great prophets told how Jidon once assumed to dispute the anger of Vodar, and Vodar, rising in a cloud of light behind his eternal shield, with a blast of thunders hurled Jidon down to earth, where the latter founded the city of Pergasia. Poets had sung this; sculptors had smitten it in marble on the frieze of the

In answer to " mouth of the that that.

temple. How would Akon brook the alien insolence of ins' ling the once defeated Jidon on the destals of prayer? from the bewildered , the chief priest said on's affair; that Jidon od, having passed through bors and meditations; that ady to appear in his destined any rate, in the new order of Akon was to be honored as the priest in Cecropolias. Vodar had

ever left him a subordinate; Jidon would exalt him to the first place.

The temptation and the logic was strong in Akon. He bent heavily near the light of the bronze lamp. Black shadows were around his purple robe. Huge, animated clouds of smoke rolled from the sacred flame of the altar. Glimmering bronze wreaths hung atop the marble columns. A heavy incense wrapped him. Perfumed, winking, terrible gloom filled the hall and seemed to shift about. It all told of the power of Jidon. Akon was there as a mere supplicant.

After some minutes of contemplation, and without more argument or ado, Akon, first with a gesture, signified, and then with words uttered the surrender of Vodar. He bartered the supremacy of gods. It was the business of priests. Yet he requested in provision thereof the pledge of maintaining one ancient custom: that of taxing the hearth-fires of all the inhabitants for one piece of silver at the first thunder-storm of each year. This had been for the service of the eternal fire of Vodar and the ceremonies of two attendant priests. Such tax was repugnant to the Pergasians and to Jidon, their priests always having denounced the custom. However, by virtue of the raising of the god, it was agreed that the prospective chief priest be allowed to continue the ceremonies of fire, but not attribute it as an equal joy of the new God of Thunderbolts.

He was then instructed to have a dream in which Vodar should bid him violate the statue of Jidon by offering it the unused parts of Vodar's sacrificial bull and casting some of these at its face.

These things Akon promised to do, and took leave of his entertainers. (To be Continued.)

HE MEN in the rear room of the half-way house admitted that things looked bad. Indeed, it was from sheer despondency that Fenn Colby, who was dealing, forgot to stack the pack. It was, however, only after the one inexperienced player had raked in the pot that the utter hopelessness of the situation became clear and the crowd, allowing the cards to fall upon the table or mingle with the sawdust on the floor, rose with one gloomy impulse to gaze again in the direction of the up-stage from Carquez, which had just come in.

There seemed nothing, in the appearance of the vehicle, to justify their state of mind: worn, bent and reeling, like an outcast acceptable neither to the local wilderness nor the civilization between which it plied, it grinned at them familiarly from the dull sockets of its unlighted lamps.

On the driver's seat, "Leredo" Dick lounged with professional taciturnity, the reins loose but ready in his hands.

So far, the men in the doorway saw no unusual thing, for the stage was but one of a common type, and Leredo was the same, though the hardiest and most reckless of his class.

What held the attention of the interrupted gamblers was the other figure on the box. "Yes," said Colby, after another long, unwinking stare, "I can't get what's brought him up here from the Southern run, but that sure is 'Law an' Order' Wade!"

After the comprehensive glance in which they had been photographed and classified, the man of whom they spoke ignored them utterly. He seemed oblivious of those around him and of where he was; and indeed he was so, for even Dick's roared command, the wild rush of the four

against the traces, and the mad heeling of the coach, failed to tell him that they were again upon their way.

For John Wade had just entered a new world, the general admirability of which puzzled while fascinating his simple heart

a few moments before, when they had swung into San Peto for mail and passengers, the usual derelicts of a half-way house had surrounded them, and, just as he was turning from the too familiar sight he had caught a flash of white duck, a figure whose lissom grace he had noticed even before its slenderness, a tumble of blonde hair which the sombrero could neither control nor hide and, beneath it, gray eyes, merry and comprehending, which looked into his and smiled. This he had seen.

And she: a man, big-boned, and lean, tanned as to face and honest as to eyes, fearless, alert and forceful, yet fun-loving as became his perfect health. And one thing more: his sawed-off Winchester and his position on the box told her that he was the Express Messenger.

Their eyes had met only for an instant, and then the crowd had drifted back between; but the vision tarried with him, tarried to tell him that its subtly suggested comradeship had, unaccountably, terminated his loneliness.

He had been lonely: the peculiar respect, which was accorded him, rested heavily at times. He was young enough to attribute it to the office which he held, but the others knew that it was because, in the International Rapid Revolver contest at Nevada, the year before, he had established an almost unbelievable record in marksmanship. That had marked him, made his name a by-word in every gambling house and in a thousand lost camps. among the hills. They went further, even knew his history, could have told you how he had left the East for ranching in the limitless Southwest, and, there being

cleverly cheated of his patrimony, how he had struck northward, with boyish enthusiasm entering the great match, and won. And when a California company had immediately engaged him to guard the treasure weekly carried in the Carquez stage, the salary which had amazed him, struck them as being not more than adequate.

It also struck them as appropriate that they should leave him to himself. So much for the decision of the "unreconstructed" who formed the population's

mass.

On his side, male and female alike, he pitied them, and sought them only professionally; he fell back, for companionship, on Leredo Dick, who, knowing a man when he saw one, loved him as a father might have done.

Tonight, however, Dick was disappointed in his protege. "'Re you 'sleep?" he asked, as they flew along their way. "Tell you what, this's yer first trip over here, and some of these places, you want to get familiar with. That thar, fer example," indicating a dark corner of buckeyes with his whip, "'s where Hank Conley, Messenger before you, got his."

Still, he was not answered.

“An' I meant to have told you that, just as we gits to the top, to turn down for th' flats

This time, he was interrupted: "Never saw anything like her, Dick!”

Leredo turned, then, following the other's eyes: "She sure 's a beauty. Looks light, too, fer her 100 stone. Got her at Dal's. Didn't want to let her go, but she'd took a plumb dislike to him, snapped a junk out of his shoulder, and, only the day before-____”

The Messenger was staring into the weather-beaten face: "For Gad's sake, Dick, what are you talking about?"

Dick stared back, no less incredulously. "Talking 'bout? Same as you, of course; that thar new off-leader, cleanest little mare that ever come out of Arkansaw!"

"You're wrong," laughed Wade. "I was speaking of that girl."

"Didn't see her," said Dick, with evident disgust, as his eyes clung to the slighted mare. And, to the next question: "Not noticin' her, how could you expect me to recollect her name!"

Another did, however. "That was 'Rinda Collard," said a voice from the body of the stage. "Just back from the States; her father keeps the half-way house.'

"Thank you." As he spoke, Wade turned, but night had come down suddenly in the defile, and he could not see the speaker's face. He recognized the voice, though: that of the tenderfoot tourist who, soon after they left Bolling, had shown urban interest in the Messenger's abbreviated rifle and 44.

He thought of this now; but the thought passed as colorless recollections will, and, as they took the down grade without break or slackening of their pace, he left the present for the future—and the girl.

At Fowler's, the next stop, he bought a pair of delicately-cut and rarely-beaded moccasins, which, from the seat, he had seen hanging at the door, addressed them to her, speculating with a laugh on their reception, as the stage swung out upon the main road again.

Then, lulled by the steady rub of the leather and Leredo's accompanying exhortation of the four, he relaxed utterly, imagination to grow until the actual passed into unreality, under the impulse of his thoughts: the close-growing foliage which on both sides hemmed the road, seemed hangings of velvet, and every star a planet in the unwinding ribbon of sky above his head; the forest glades reached endless, pillared by the redwoods, innumerable and infinite. And, through their quiet, not to be sounded depths, he was riding with her now, the two grateful for the solitude which made the more blest their all-complete companionship, and he was leaning toward her, had even-when, without warning, the stage gave a sudden and breathless reel, and a voice, which he had heard before, said evenly: "You're both covered, so I guess, young fellow, if you don't mind, you can pass me down that mail bag and the box."

Wade's whirl showed him only a tangled wilderness thrown out in a vivid circle by the lamps, and, directly before him, the long barrel of a Colt's, steady in the hands of the "tourist" who had examined his outfit with such well-acted temerity six hours before.