Rousing up suddenly, imagine my surprise to see sitting, chin on knees, about a yard away, a slender girlish figure, infinitely out of place in that world of rough barbarians. Was it possible? Was I dreaming? No, there was no doubt about it, she was a girl of the Hither folk, slim and pretty, but with a wonderfully sad look in her gazelle eyes, and scarcely a sign of the indolent happiness of Seth in the pale little face regarding me so fixedly. "Good gracious, miss," I said, still rubbing my eyes and doubting my senses, "have you dropped from the skies? You are the very last person I expected to see in this barbarian place." "And you too, sir. Oh, it is lovely to see one so newly from home, and free-seeming--not a slave." "How did you know I was from Seth?" "Oh, that was easy enough," and with a little laugh she pointed to a pebble lying between us, on which was a piece of battered sweetmeat in a perforated bamboo box. Poor An had given me something just like that in a playful mood, and I had kept it in my pocket for her sake, being, as you will have doubtless observed, a sentimental young man, and now I clapped my hand where it should have been, but it was gone. "Yes," said my new friend, "that is yours. I smelt the sweetmeat coming up the hill, and crossed the grass until I found you here asleep. Oh, it was lovely! I took it from your pocket, and white Seth rose up before my swimming eyes, even at the scent of it. I am Si, well named, for that in our land means sadness, Si, the daughter of Prince Hath's chief sweetmeat-maker, so I should know something of such stuff. May I, please, nibble a little piece?" "Eat it all, my lass, and welcome. How came you here? But I can guess. Do not answer if you would rather not." "Ay, but I will. It is not every day I can speak to ears so friendly as yours. I am a slave, chosen for my luckless beauty as last year's tribute to Ar-hap." "And now?" "And now the slave of Ar-hap's horse-keeper, set aside to make room for a fresher face." "And do you know whose face that is?" "Not I, a hapless maid sent into this land of horrors, to bear ignominy and stripes, to eat coarse food and do coarse work, the miserable plaything of some brute in semi-human form, with but the one consolation of dying early as we tribute-women always die. Poor comrade in exile, I only know her as yet by sympathy." "What if I said it was Heru, the princess?" The Martian girl sprang to her feet, and clasping her hands exclaimed, "Heru, the Slender! Then the end comes, for it is written in our books that the last tribute is paid when the best is paid. Oh, how splendid if she gave herself of free will to this slavery to end it once for all. Was it so?" "I think, Si, your princess could not have known of that tradition; she did not come willingly. Besides, I am come to fetch her back, if it may be, and that spoils the look of sacrifice."