Putting prayer aside, then, he trusted to his own efforts. It is certain that he lacked not courage of a kind. His arm up shielding his face, he struggled on. His breath came in sobbing gasps. A dark mass looming before him brought him to a halt. From out the mass gleamed a faint light piercing the snow-driven atmosphere. He took a step towards it, and sank in a drift to his thigh. For a moment he struggled, but to sink the deeper. Well-nigh spent, drowsiness was falling on him. It seemed that further effort availed him nought. As well rest now as not; rest and sleep. In the blinding snow around him he thought he saw a woman standing. She came nearer, bending to him. Now indeed he cried, “At last!” and stretched out his arms. Even as he cried, he saw her eyes. They were avenging, terrible.... The snow was like a white flame round her.... Shuddering with more than cold, he looked full at her. Then unconsciousness fell upon him. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XVIII THE SAGE MENIPPUS LACHESIS, sitting in his turret chamber, was poring over a parchment. You may be very sure this was not the name with which his parents had started him in life. It was with one simpler. I have heard it rumoured that once on a time he was known as Thomas Herdman,—a good honest appellation truly. That time, however, was now many years old, and rumour can easily go astray; indeed, rumour wandering from the mark more often than not, there is little credence to be put in that quarter. At all events it is sufficient for our purpose that he was now known as above set forth,—Menippus Lachesis, the Sage, reader of the riddle of the stars, gazer of crystals, philosopher of numbers, and penetrator into the secrets of life. Many men sought his wisdom, and if they left him little the wiser, through the multiplicity of his words or the brevity of his cryptic utterances, either of which was given them according to their needs as figured by Menippus, that doubtless was due to their own lack of receptiveness. The turret chamber was a circular room hung with twelve blue curtains. To the north the curtains were indigo; they then passed through shades of sapphire to a clear light blue at the south, and back again through sapphire blue to indigo. Here you have shown the darkness of the winter months, lightening through spring to summer, and back again to the darkness of winter. Each curtain was embroidered in gold with its own sign of the Zodiac, from the Ram, through the rest of them to the Fishes.