“But there was no denying Zaemon. He burst into one of his black furies, and while he spoke at me, I tell you I felt as good as dead. You know his powers?” “I have seen some of them.” “Well, the Gods alone know which are the true Gods, and which are the others. I serve the one that gives me employment. But those that Zaemon serves give him power, and that’s beyond denying. You see that right hand of mine? It is dead and paralysed from the wrist, and that is a gift of Zaemon. He bestowed it, he said, to make me collect my attention. Then he said more hard things concerning what he was pleased to term my apostasy, not letting me put up a word in my own defence of how the change was forced upon me. And finally, said he, I might either do his bidding on a certain matter to the letter, or take that punishment which my falling away from the old Gods had earned. ‘I shall not kill you,’ said he, ‘but I will cover all your limbs with a paralysis, such as you have tasted already, and when at length death reaches you in some gutter, you will welcome it.’” “If Zaemon said those words, he meant them. So you accepted the alternative?” “Had I, with a wife depending on me, any other choice? I asked his pleasure. It was to find you when you came in here from some distant part of the land, and deliver to you his message. “‘Then tell me where is the meeting place,’ said I, ‘and when.’ “‘There is none appointed, nor is the day fixed,’ said he. ‘You must watch and search always for him. But when he comes, you will be guided to his place.’ Well, Deucalion, I think I was guided, but how, I do not know. But now I have found you, and if there’s such a thing as gratitude, I ask you to put in your word with Zaemon that this deadness be taken away from my hand. It’s an awful thing for a man to be forced to go through life like this, for no real fault of his own. And Zaemon could cure it from where he sat, if he was so minded.” “You seem still to have a very full faith in some of the old Gods’ priests,” I said. “But so far, I do not see that your errand is done. I have had no message yet.” “Why, the message is so simple that I do not see why he could not have got some one else to carry it. You are to make a great blaze. You may fire the grasses of the plain in front of this wood if you choose. And on the night which follows, you are to go round to that flank of the Sacred Mountain away from the city where the rocks run down sheer, and there they will lower a rope and haul you up to their hands above.” “It seems easy, and I thank you for your pains. I will ask Zaemon that your hand may be restored to you.”