And he was afraid lest Falana read his thoughts. The longer he stayed, the harder it would be to leave; for in spite of his having come with fraudulent intent, he had done enough good to these barbarians to have become attached to them. Meanwhile, the sooner Venus became the morning star, the better he would like it. V At last came the night when he felt sure that Kwangtan's search for the bones of Skanderbek had become such a fixed habit that the priest would be ranging further and further afield, leaving the shrine unguarded for an ever-lengthening period. The length of Kwangtan's absence was the measure of Verrill's head start. As he set out for his goal, he said to himself, "When the old devil misses the ruby, and then hears I'm gone, he'll likely play foxy and cook up a yarn about my having taken it back to the gods. He couldn't be so dumb as to admit he was out wandering when he should have been guarding the shrine.... I've done a reasonable number of other miracles since I brought Falana's nephew back from the dead ... so if he's smart, he'll invent another miracle, and that will make it nice for Falana...." And so, all at ease, he rode boldly from the walled enclosure. The guards, assuming he was going out on a case, settled back after greeting him, and drew their sheepskin coats closer about them. Nearing the shrine, he left his horse in the shadow of a limestone ledge, to proceed afoot. He had to make sure that Kwangtan was actually away. Stealthily, he made the most of rocks and shadows to cover his advance. The gurgling overflow of the spring combined with the whining of the wind to make a curtain of sound. He was quite near the spot from which, unseen, he could look in and see if Kwangtan was there, when he heard a disturbance which gave him all the answer he needed. Kwangtan was not abroad, hunting a dead man's bones. He was instead choking, gasping for breath; in his struggle, he knocked down some pottery, judging from the clatter. The sounds, and the way the old man had been scrambling about by night, exploring ravines and caverns, exposing and overtaxing himself, told the story. He had come to the end of his crooked rope. This was perfect. It had worked far better than Verrill had anticipated. Just sit and wait for silence and the finish. But another ingredient took effect. Verrill's own long-sustained pretense of being a doctor drove him forward against his best interest. After two paces taken in a helpless daze, he was no longer compulsion-driven and bewildered; he ran, and with his kit. He had brought it with him, from force of habit as much as for making a show for the benefit of whomsoever he might encounter along the way to the border. As he knelt beside his patient, Verrill concluded that Kwangtan's heart had been cutting up tricks; though with exposure and worry, other complications might have set in. He got his vials and his hypo and set to work.