Thereafter, sleeping or waking, the huge beast remained at Polaris's side, and none could coax him thence. And many Maeronicans deemed that strange. But as no man, not even Shamar's priests, dared to interfere with the sacred brutes, except when they played their parts in the ceremonials of the god, the attendance of Rombar upon the stranger was permitted. Under a guard of mailed foot-soldiers, led by Brunar, who was a captain in the palace regiment, the prisoners were marched from the ancient palace of Bel-Tisam to the newer palace of Bel-Ar. At their right, as they passed up the street called Chedar's Flight, was the wall, pierced by many gateways, of the Place of Games, with its basalt amphitheater and its arena. As they passed they heard the hoofs of galloping steeds, the rumble of chariot wheels, and the cries of the charioteers, where the young lords of Adlaz exercised their horses. From slits in the wall low down near the pavement, issued the howling and snarling of wild beasts; for a menagerie was a part of the equipment of the Place of Games. * * * * * Beyond the hippodrome, their way led around half the circle of the broad drive on which the four main avenues gave, and which surrounded the wonderful gardens of the Temple of the Sun. The Americans, three of whose number were widely traveled, marveled anew at the splendor of that mighty pile of white marble, its lofty columns, towers and domes, dazzling in the sunlight, their golden caps ablaze. Luxor and Karnac in the days when Pharaoh Rameses ruled in Egypt could not have shown the equal of this structure. With armed men clanking on each side, the captives entered through a massive peristyle of vari-colored pillars which was the portal to the house of the king. Along a corridor in which four elephants might have found way and clearance to walk abreast, the guards conducted them. At each end of the corridor there stood ajar tall gates of bronze, their bars interlaced with heavy patterns of gleaming gold, encrusted with the luminous metal, known in Maeronica as orichalcum, and set with many precious gems. Through the second gateway the prisoners were marched, and were in the audience chamber of Bel-Ar, the great king. It was similar in shape to the place where they had been quartered for the night; but there all similitude ceased. Bel-Tisam of old had sat in a plain and massive hall and been content. The house of Bel-Ar held treasures in metals and gems on its sculptured walls and pillars, aye, and on its floors, too, which could have paid the national debt of a wide and wasteful state.