“This is a day of very wondrous happenings,” he said. “I have no more room in me to be astonished. Our maiden said there was peace between you and us. But for this coming of a foe we should have made sure.” The children shuddered. “Now speak. Are you upon our side?” “_Yes_. Don’t I keep telling you we are?” Robert said. “Look here. I will give you a sign. You see this.” He held out the toy pistol. “I shall speak to it, and if it answers me you will know that I and the others are come to guard your sacred thing—that we’ve just made the offerings to.” “Will that god whose image you hold in your hand speak to you alone, or shall I also hear it?” asked the man cautiously. “You’ll be surprised when you _do_ hear it,” said Robert. “Now, then.” He looked at the pistol and said— “If we are to guard the sacred treasure within”—he pointed to the hedged-in space—“speak with thy loud voice, and we shall obey.” He pulled the trigger, and the cap went off. The noise was loud, for it was a two-shilling pistol, and the caps were excellent. Every man, woman, and child in the village fell on its face on the sand. The headman who had accepted the test rose first. “The voice has spoken,” he said. “Lead them into the ante-room of the sacred thing.” So now the four children were led in through the opening of the hedge and round the lane till they came to an opening in the inner hedge, and they went through an opening in that, and so passed into another lane. The thing was built something like this, and all the hedges were of brushwood and thorns: [Illustration] “It’s like the maze at Hampton Court,” whispered Anthea. The lanes were all open to the sky, but the little hut in the middle of the maze was round-roofed, and a curtain of skins hung over the doorway. “Here you may wait,” said their guide, “but do not dare to pass the curtain.” He himself passed it and disappeared. “But look here,” whispered Cyril, “some of us ought to be outside in case the Psammead turns up.” “Don’t let’s get separated from each other, whatever we do,” said Anthea. “It’s quite bad enough to be separated from the Psammead. We can’t do anything while that man is in there. Let’s all go out into the village again. We can come back later now we know the way in. That man’ll have to fight like the rest, most likely, if it comes to fighting. If we find the Psammead we’ll go straight home. It must be getting late, and I don’t much like this mazy place.”