“What on earth _were_ these Yezidees doing, Tressa?” asked Cleves almost roughly. The girl’s white face was marred by the imprints of deepening horror. “It is the Tchor-Dagh,” she said mechanically. “They are using every resource of hell to destroy me—testing the gigantic power of Evil—as though it were some vast engine charged with thunderous destruction!—and they were testing it to discover its terrific capacity to annihilate——” Her voice died in her dry throat; she dropped her bloodless visage into both hands and remained seated so. Both men looked at her in silence, not daring to interfere. Finally the girl lifted her pallid face from her hands. “That is what they were doing,” she said in a dull voice. “Out of inanimate earth they were making things animate—living creatures—to—to test the hellish power which they are storing—concentrating—for my destruction.” “What is their purpose?” asked Cleves harshly. “What do these Mongol Sorcerers expect to gain by making little live things out of lumps of garden dirt?” “They are testing their power,” whispered the girl. “Like tuning up a huge machine?” muttered Selden. “Yes.” “For what purpose?” “To make larger living creatures out of—of clay.” “They can’t—they can’t _create_!” exclaimed Cleves. “I don’t know how—by what filthy tricks—they make rats out of dirt. But they can’t make a—anything—like a—like a man!” Tressa’s body trembled slightly. “Once,” she said, “in the temple, Prince Sanang took dust which was brought in sacks of goat-skin, and fashioned the heap of dirt with his hands, so that it resembled the body of a man lying there on the marble floor under the shrine of Erlik.... And—and then, there in the shadows where only the Dark Star burned—that black lamp which is called the Dark Star—the long heap of dust lying there on the marble pavement began to—to _breathe_!—” She pressed both hands over her breast as though to control her trembling body: “I saw it; I saw the long shape of dust begin to breathe, to stir, move, and slowly lift itself——” “A Yezidee trick!” gasped Cleves; but he also was trembling now. “God!” whispered the girl. “Allah alone knows—the Merciful, the Long Suffering—He knows what it was that we temple girls saw there—that Yulun saw—that Sa-n’sa and I beheld there rising up like a man from the marble floor—and standing erect in the shadowy twilight of the Dark Star....” Her hands gripped at her breast; her face was deathly. “Then,” she said, “I saw Prince Sanang draw his sabre of Indian steel, and he struck ... once only.... And a dead man fell down where the _thing_ had stood. And all the marble was flooded with scarlet blood.” “A trick,” repeated Cleves, in the ghost of his own voice. But his gaze grew vacant. Presently Selden spoke in tones that sounded weakly querulous from emotional reaction: