"That is not well," he said, "you would be dashed to pieces. Ulfin,
one of the six, will wait for us to-night on the edge of the grove.
He can conduct the way to the vessel."
"Ah, sir," said Rollo, not without a certain self-satisfaction,
"something is always sure to turn up, sir."
From a tour of the temple Amory came listlessly back to the king's
chapel. There, where the descendants of Abibaal had worshiped until
their idols had been refined by Time to a kind of decoration, the
Americans and Jarvo had spent the night. They had slept stretched on
benches of beveled stone. They had waked to trace the figures in a
length of tapestry representing the capture of Io on the coast of
Argolis, doubtless woven by an eye-witness. They had bathed in a
brook near the entrance where stood the altar for the sacrifice
round which the priests and _hierodouloi_ had been wont to dance,
and where huge architraves, metopes and tryglyphs, massive as those
at Gebeil and Tortosa and hewn from living rock, rose from the
fragile green of the wood like a huge arm signaling its eternal
"Alas!" They had partaken of Jarvo's fruit and sweet herbs, and
Rollo had served them, standing with his back to the niche where
once had looked augustly down the image of the god.
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