Analos, guardian of the portals of the Gateway, dwelt alone with the majesty of his god, save for the wild goats, which cared naught for orders, priest or god. Watch was kept no longer at the mouth of the cavern where Minos and his party lay. Well it was for them that it was so, else they had perished of cold. No longer was the cave tenable without fire. Like the people below in the valley, the refugees were forced to work in shifts of axmen to keep the lives within them. In the cave a fire roared constantly, and another without on the plateau. Analos had given up his battle against the king. It was by his orders that his spearsmen kept watch at the cave no longer. His fiery spirit was burning itself out within him, and he was turning cold, as the lifeless hills turned cold. It seemed to him that his will roamed through the chambers of his mind, and in them could find no more of anger against Minos; nor could it conjure up, as it had been want to do, more terrible behests of the god Hephaistos. Chaos had come to Analos, and let it come, said he, for no more might he read the mind of his mighty master and interpret his wishes. On the Gateway he dwelt alone and in a daze, and waited, waited, for he knew not what. But he was to see one more vision--wild as any his madness ever brought to him. He hardly ever slept. Hour by hour he paced the paths of the upper terrace, before the carven portal of the cliff, until there came a day when he found that he could enter the winding way that led to the ancient temple of death on the crater ledge. On the stone steps of the sanctuary the priest laid himself, worn out with his vigil, and there sleep bound him fast. For hours he slumbered on. He awoke with a great start of horror, the fear of a half-remembered dream, a monstrous vision. He rushed to the brink of the sheer ledge. * * * * * Hundreds of feet below him writhed the fiery lake, wafting upwards its roseate mists and vapors, as it had for centuries. It was once more at its ancient level--_or was it below?_ He stared; and as he gazed, it seemed to him that, inch by inch, very slowly, the seething maelstrom was sinking! Suddenly realization came to him. The flaming crown of the Gateway was gone. The fires of the Gateway were going! Poised at the ledge's brink, he flung wide his arms. "Hephaistos! Hephaistos! Master, whither goest thou?" he shrieked. The dull rumble of the fires, the soughing of the wind in the mighty cone, the soft curling reek of the fire mists drifting by him were his only answer. Came the thought of those below in the valley, and he rushed from the temple and passed down the terraces. Already snow was falling on their green declivity.