When the queen had done, came the turn of that high priest, whose name was Brendaldoombro. Up he rose and addressed a few words to Lathendra Lepraylya. Her answer was laconic, accompanied by an assenting motion of her right hand. For a few seconds her look rested upon Milton Rhodes and me, and it was as though across those strange, wondrous pale eyes of hers a shadow had fallen. As for the high priest, he had instantly, and with a fierceness that he could not bridle, turned to Drorathusa. How Rhodes and I, as we sat there, wished that we could understand the words being spoken! "Always, O Drorathusa," said Brendaldoombro, "has your spirit been strange and wayward. Always have you been a seeker after that which is dark and mysterious. And, of a truth, dark and mysterious is the evil which you have brought down upon Drome. "Never content with what it is given us to know! Always seeking the obscure, the concealed! Sometimes, I fear, even _that which is forbidden_!" At those words the eyes of Drorathusa flashed, but she made no answer. "Cursed was that hour--cursed, I say, be that peeking and searching and peering that discovered it to your eyes, that record of those who, led on by the powers of the Evil One, ventured up into the caves of darkness and at last up into the World Above itself--a world, as our holy writings tell us, of fearful and nameless things, of demons who, to achieve their fell purpose"--here he fixed his vulture-eye upon Milton and me--"assume the shapes of men. "But you, O Drorathusa, must needs find that record, that writing which never should have been written. And you must needs turn a deaf ear to our words of counsel and admonition. But you must needs beg and beseech and implore our permission to go yourself up into those fearful places and there see with your own eyes whether that in the writing was true or false. And we, alas, in an evil hour and one of weakness--yes, we did yield to your importunities and your wicked interpretation of our sacred writings, and we did suffer you to go forth." It seems, however, that just the opposite was the truth--that Brendaldoombro, fearing the growing popularity and power of this extraordinary woman, had been only too glad to see her start for the caverns of darkness, from the black mysteries of which he, of course, had hoped that neither she nor a single one of her companions would ever return. "Yes, evil was the hour in which you went forth, O Drorathusa the Wayward One. And evil is this in which we see these demons in the shapes of men sitting in our very midst, before the very throne of our queen. Already has God shown His anger, shown it in this darkness which has sent fear to the stoutest heart--this darkness the like of which no living man has ever known in Drome.