Then Gerald said: “No. I must never forget that, whether I am a Savior or a sun deity, or whether I am habitually used to discharge both functions, I in any case remain Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and Preserver, the Lord of the Third Truth, and so on. I am a most notable figure, of some sort or another sort, in Dirghic mythology. I am the appointed rider of the silver stallion. I am destined to inherit from the Master Philologist the great and best words of magic, and after that poor hospitable fellow’s downfall to reign in his stead over the place beyond good and evil which is the goal of all the gods of men and the reward of their meritorious exertions. I cannot forsake such a majestic destiny in order to play with the droll and pretty figures that move about in the depths of this mirror. And whether or not this is a mirror which I may require hereafter, when I have come into my kingdom and have resumed my exalted divine estate in my appropriate mythology, is a matter which I shall settle in due time who have all eternity wherein to do whatever I may prefer.” 14. Evarvan of the Mirror THEN Gerald perceived that the wives of Glaum were not yet through with their wonder-workings, for these seven women were now about a ceremony which they called Asvamedha. They led into the temple a brown horse. Before the mirror they struck down this horse with pole-axes. The tail was cut off by the flaxen-haired wife in green, and the naked wife carried it away, Gerald did not know whither. The horse’s head also was severed from the body, by that wife who was with child; the head was then adorned with a chaplet made of small loaves of bread. This head was afterward impaled upon a stake and thus was set upright before the mirror, but not facing it. Then the six wives of Glaum who yet remained in the temple mixed the blood of the horse with the blood of unborn calves; they turned the stake: and they showed Gerald what he must do. When he had obeyed, and when they had all invoked Evarvan, then the golden glowing of the sacred mirror was turned into a paler haze like that of moonshine. Out of this silvery mistiness came a crowned woman. She was clothed in white, and about her head shone an aureole.