As yet, however, it had not reached the houses built against the mountain, in one of which we had been lodged. Nor had it overflowed the great Rock of Offering, which, you will remember, stood about the height of a man above the level of the plain, being in fact a large slab of consolidated lava that once had flowed from the crater into the lake in a glacier-like stream of limited breadth. It is true that the circumstance that the rock sloped downwards to the cave mouth seemed to contradict that theory, but this I attribute to some subsequent subsidence at its base, such as often happens in volcanic areas where hidden forces are at work beneath the surface of the earth. Well, I repeat, the rock was not yet flooded, and so it came about that at the proper moment, as had happened on this day, perhaps for hundreds of years, Heu-Heu emerged from the cave “to claim his Holy Bride.” “How could he do that?” asked Good triumphantly, thinking, I suppose, that he had caught Allan tripping. “You said that Heu-Heu was a statue, so how could he come out of the cave?” “Does not it occur to you, Good,” asked Allan, “that a statue is sometimes carried? However, in this case it was not so, for Heu-Heu himself walked out of that cave, followed by a number of women, with some of the Hairy Folk behind them, and looking at him as he stalked along, hideous and gigantic, I understood two things. The first of these was, how it came about that Sabeela had vowed to me that many had seen Heu-Heu with their eyes, as Issicore also declared he had done himself, ‘walking stiffly.’ The second, why it was a law that the canoe which brought the Holy Bride should wait until she was removed at dawn; namely in order that those in it might behold Heu-Heu and go back to their land to testify to his bodily existence, even if they were not allowed to give details as to his appearance, because to speak of this would, they believed, bring a ‘curse’ upon them.” “But there wasn’t a Heu-Heu,” objected Good again. “Good,” said Allan, “really you are what Hans called me—quite clever. With extraordinary acumen you have arrived at the truth. There wasn’t a Heu-Heu. But, Good, if you live long enough,” he went on with a gentle sarcasm which showed that he was annoyed, “yes, if you live long enough, you will learn that this world is full of deceptions, and that the Tree of Illusions does not, or rather did not, grow only in Heu-Heu’s Garden. As you say, no Heu-Heu existed, but there did exist an excellent copy of him made up with a skill worthy of a high-class pantomime artist; so excellent indeed that from fifty yards or so away, it was impossible to tell the difference between it and the great original as depicted in the cave.” There in all his hairy, grinning horror, “walking stiffly,” marched Heu-Heu, eleven or twelve feet high.