The Yezidee had taken one of these roots into his hands. Squatting there in the semi-dusk, he began to massage it between his long, muscular fingers, rubbing, moulding, pressing the root with caressing deliberation. His unhurried manipulation, for a few moments, seemed to produce no result. But presently the Ginseng root became lighter in colour and more supple, yielding to his fingers, growing ivory pale, sinuously limber in a newer and more delicate symmetry. “Look!” gasped Cleves, grasping his wife’s arm. “_What_ is that man doing?” “The Tchor-Dagh!” whispered Tressa. “Do you see what lies twisting there in his hands?” The Ginseng root had become the tiny naked body of a woman—a little ivory-white creature, struggling to escape between the hands that had created it—dark, powerful, masterly hands, opening leisurely now, and releasing the living being they had fashioned. The thing scrambled between the fingers of the Sorcerer, leaped into the grass, ran a little way and hid, crouched down, panting, almost hidden by the long grass. The shocked watchers on the wall could still see the creature. Tressa felt Cleves’ body trembling beside her. She rested a cool, steady hand on his. “It is the Tchor-Dagh,” she breathed close to his face. “The Mongol Sorcerer is becoming formidable.” “Oh, God!” murmured Cleves, “that thing he made is _alive_! I saw it. I can see it hiding there in the grass. It’s frightened—breathing! It’s alive!” His pistol, clutched in his right hand, quivered. His wife laid her hand on it and cautiously shook her head. “No,” she said, “that is of no use.” “But what that Yezidee is doing is—is blasphemous——” “Watch him! His mind is stealthily feeling its way among the laws and secrets of the Tchor-Dagh. He has found a thread. He is following it through the maze into hell’s own labyrinth! He has created a tiny thing in the image of the Creator. He will try to create a larger being now. Watch him with his Ginseng roots!” Tiyang, looming ape-like on his haunches in the deepening dusk, moulded and massaged the Ginseng roots, one after another. And one after another, tiny naked creatures wriggled out of his palms between his fingers and scuttled away into the herbage. Already the dim lawn was alive with them, crawling, scurrying through the grass, creeping in among the flower-beds, little, ghostly-white things that glimmered from shade into shadow like moonbeams. Tressa’s mouth touched her husband’s ear: “It is for the secret of Destruction that the Yezidee seeks. But first he must learn the secret of creation. He is learning.... And he must learn no more than he has already learned.” “That Yezidee is a living man. Shall I fire?” “No.” “I can kill him with the first shot.” “Hark!” she whispered excitedly, her hand closing convulsively on her husband’s arm. The whip-crack of a rifle-shot still crackled in their ears.