A tremor passed through his limbs. He started to retrace his steps, but some unknown agency compelled him onward. Penetrating the gloomy foliage, Tristan found himself before a large ruin, grey and roofless, from the interior of which came, muffled and indistinct, the sound of voices. Two men were stealthily creeping beneath the shadow of a wall that extended for some distance from the ruin. Both wore long monkish garbs and were muffled from head to toe. Over their faces they wore vizors with slits for eyes and mouth. One of the twain was spare, yet muscular. His companion walked with a stooping gait and supported himself by a staff. The light which had attracted Tristan, emanated from a lantern which they had placed on the ground and which they could shade at will, but which cast its fitful glimmer over the grass plot, revealing what appeared to be a grave, from which the mould had been thrown up. At a short distance there stood a black and stunted yew tree. Before this they paused. Now, from under his black cassock, the taller produced a strange object, the nature of which Tristan was unable to discover by the fitful light of the moon. No sooner was it revealed to his companion, than the latter began to chant a weird incantation, in which he who held the strange object joined. Louder and more strident grew their voices, and, notwithstanding the warmth of the summer night, Tristan felt an icy shudder permeate his whole being while, with a strange fascination, he watched the twain. Now he who supported himself by a staff uttered a shrill inarticulate outcry, and, producing a long, gleaming knife from under his cassock, stabbed the thing viciously, while his voice rose in mad, strident screams: "Emen Hetan! Emen Hetan! Palu! Baalberi! Emen Hetan!" The fit of madness seemed to have caught his companion. Producing a knife similar to that of the other he, too, stabbed the object he held in his hand, shrieking deliriously: "Agora! Agora! Patrisa! Agora!" An hour was to come when Tristan was to learn the terrible import of the apparently meaningless jumble which struck his ear with mad discordance. Suddenly he felt upon himself the insane gleam of two eyes, peering from the slits of the bent figure's mask. There was a death-like stillness, as both looked towards the intruder. Tristan would have fled, but his feet seemed rooted to the spot. His energies were paralyzed as under the influence of a terrible spell. The stooping form raised aloft a small phial. A bluish vapor floated upward, in thin spiral curls. The effect was instantaneous. Tristan was seized by a great drowsiness. His limbs refused to support him. He no longer felt the ground under his feet. His hand went to his head and, reeling like a drunken man, he fell among the tall weeds that grew in riotous profusion around the ancient masonry.