The bough was broken, then, as a taunt, a challenge, and a warning. 'You can't keep your old tree, make room for a better man!' That is the spirit of the business. The fugitive, utilised as a priest of the grove, was slain when the better man appeared, not that a new soul might keep the vegetation lively, but merely because the best man attainable was needed to guard the taboo tree. The sacred and priestly character of a runaway fighting slave does not, to me, seem pronounced.[44] We know not that he ever sacrificed. Ladies who wished to be mothers visited the shrine, indeed,[45] as this Diana was a goddess like Lucina, presiding over birth. I do not deny that the priest might have worked miracles for them (like the Indian forest sages who do the miracle for childless rajahs). But his one known duty, guarding the tree, was inconsistent with much attention to this branch of his sacred calling. 'He prowled about with sword drawn, always on the look out.'[46] That is all! We have not, in this theory, to invent a single fact, or introduce a single belief where we do not know that it existed. Sanctuaries or asyla did exist, we have given examples of sanctuary trees, and the tree was a sanctuary for just one runaway slave at a time: he could not run to burg, as in our old and more merciful law. If he wanted the billet of ghastly priest he had to fight for it: Lads, you'll need to fight Before you drive ta peasties. Before fighting he had to get through the priest's guard and break a branch of the tree which the priest protected, the act being a warning as well as a challenge. This hypothesis introduces no unknown and unproved facts, and colligates all the facts which are known. The title of 'King of the Grove' may mean no more than the title of 'Cock of the North;' or it may be a priestly title, not, even so, _necessarily_ implying that the runaway slave embodied the ruling spirit of the vegetable department. I have been favoured with objections to my guess. First, if I am right, where is the sanction for the custom at which I conjecture? Well, where is the sanction of the Samoan customs? They reposed (1) on the residence of a god in a tree, (2) on respect for a king who had lived near a tree, (3) on a legal fiction. The sanctuaries of the Arunta _Ertnatulunga_ derive their sanction from hoards of _churinga_, sacred objects of which, till recently, we knew nothing.[47] Obviously I cannot say which of many conceivable and inconceivable primeval reasons gave a sanction to the tree-asylum of Aricia. Once instituted, custom did the rest. The tree was a sanctuary for one fugitive slave, and, next, for another who could kill him.