"It is well, Makedama, thou faithful servant! Yet thou wouldst mourn

with me an hour--is it not so? Now, hearken! Bid thy people pass to

the right and to the left of me, and stand in all their numbers upon

the slopes of the grass that run down to the lips of the rift."

So Makedama, my father, bade the people do the bidding of the king,

for neither he nor the indunas saw his purpose, but I, who knew his

wicked heart, I saw it. Then the people filed past to the right and to

the left by hundreds and by thousands, and presently the grass of the