So behind our screen of bushes we wriggled back a little distance till we knew that the slope of the ground would hide us when we stood up. Then as quickly as we could we made our way eastwards for something over a quarter of a mile and after this turned to the north. As I expected, beyond the ring of the crater we found ourselves on the rising, tree-clad bosom of the mountain and, threading our path through the cedars, came presently to that track or roadway which led to the eastern gate of the amphitheatre. This road we followed unseen until presently the gateway appeared before us. We walked through it without attracting any attention, perhaps because all the people were either talking together, or praying, or perhaps because like themselves we were wrapped in white robes. At the mouth of the tunnel we stopped and I called out in a loud voice: “The white lords and their servant have come to visit Harût, as he invited them to do. Bring us, we pray you, into the presence of Harût.” Everyone wheeled round and stared at us standing there in the shadow of the gateway tunnel, for the sun behind us was still low. My word, how they did stare! A voice cried: “Kill them! Kill these strangers who desecrate our temple.” “What!” I answered. “Would you kill those to whom your high-priest has given safe-conduct; those moreover by whose help alone, as your Oracle has just declared, you can hope to slay Jana and destroy his hosts?” “How do they know that?” shouted another voice. “They are magicians!” “Yes,” I remarked, “all magic does not dwell in the hearts of the White Kendah. If you doubt it, go to look at the Watcher in the Cave whom your Oracle told you is dead. You will find that it did not lie.” As I spoke a man rushed through the gates, his white robe streaming on the wind, shouting as he emerged from the tunnel: “O Priests and Priestesses of the Child, the ancient serpent is dead. I whose office it is to feed the serpent on the day of the new moon have found him dead in his house.” “You hear,” I interpolated calmly. “The Father of Snakes is dead. If you want to know how, I will tell you. We looked on it and it died.” They might have answered that poor Savage also looked on it with the result that _he_ died, but luckily it did not occur to them to do so. On the contrary, they just stood still and stared at us like a flock of startled sheep.