The writing was the word of the Wise Men. Of the three sacred scrolls, it was the first.

Scarce did the eye of the Daughter of Truth rest upon it, when she exclaimed:

"The half of the written word has been changed. Thus spake not the Wise Men."

There was silence then in the sanctuary.

The young priests looked at one another in wonderment; the old sat with downcast eyes. At last one of these spoke.

"Honor to the truth!" he sighed. "Now that none of the uninitiated hear, let it be confessed; some of the written words are ours, not the Wise Men's. Centuries ago the writing had been worn away so that one must needs guess at half of it to read the other half with understanding. So that the uninitiated should not stumble because each of us read it in his own way, new words were graven in the stone where the old could no longer be read. But this was done by the one among the high-priests who knew best the wise words of the second scroll."

"Where have you the other scroll-the words of the Spirit?" asked the Daughter of Truth.

"In the Holy of Holies," answered the Chief High-Priest, and beckoned. The high-priests lifted the throne upon their shoulders.

When they set it down again they were in a hall smaller yet, but of far greater splendor than the others. The walls not only, but the floor and the roof, were of shining silver. Eleven seats were

"Those are not the words of the Spirit," she said.

The high-priests sat silent long. At length the oldest spoke:

"Honor to the truth! Now that the hundred brethren who must believe in our wisdom are not here to hear us, be it confessed: there is not among us one who is able to interpret the writing upon the sacred scroll. The tongue of the Spirits has been lost from time out of mind.

"We read only what we have learned from those who went before us, and they from those who preceded them. But that the forgotten writings were once read and understood by those from whom they have come down to us, that we know from the Chief High-Priests, who have read the writing upon the third scroll, the word of the Gods, in which is no error or fault."

"Show me the third scroll," commanded the heavenly maiden.

The aged Chief High-Priest arose, took her hand, and led her to the end of the hall.

He struck the silver wall with his staff, and it parted. The marble tiles upon which they stood slid forward and bore them through the cleft. When it closed behind them they were alone in a vaulted chamber, the glory of which outshone that of the others as the sun outshines the stars.

There was nothing there but gold and precious stones-nothing at all. The chamber was empty. They stood in the holy place, repository of the revealed law of the Gods under their own hand and seal.

"The third scroll! The word of the Gods!" demanded the maiden.

"Daughter!" spoke the aged priest. "We stand alone now in the inner sanctuary.

Let

"Therefore, honor to the truth! me whisper to you what he who bore this sacred staff before me whispered in my ear when he surrendered it into my hand: The third golden scroll exists only in the faith of those who have never crossed this threshold. As long as the word has been handed down from priest to priest, they have heard it even as you now receive it. None of them has known the God-written scroll except as a tradition. But all have understood that if the word of the Gods did not stand surety for the word of the Spirits, and if the word of the Spirits did not witness for us as keepers of the seers' visions, then the uninitiated would not believe the initiated, the godly would not follow the uninitiated, and godliness would vanish from the earth with faith. Therefore

have I done as did the men who bore this staff before me. Only here have I believed what only one may know here. Out yonder I have believed what all must there believe."

"Lie upon lie! all lies!" sighed the Daughter of Truth. "You lie to your brothers in your life and with your tongue; to yourself when you say that you believe that which you know to be untrue; to me when you claim to believe in your own faith. Were I to bring you the divine scroll, tell me, what would you do with it?"

"I would hide it here in the innermost sanctuary, and never let word of mine rob the faithful of their faith by showing them that it was grounded in falsehood; for piety is dearer to the Gods than the truth."

"But if now I went out in the marketplace and proclaimed the fraud to the people?"

"Then all believers would say that you denied the word of the Gods, and the faithful would drag you to the stake, vying with one another to pile high the fagots. But I shall spare them the trouble."

As he said this, he struck the floor with his staff. It split open, and the maiden sank into a yawning abyss at his feet.

But no dungeon on earth is deep enough and dark enough to be a grave for that which is at home in heaven.

The fairy maiden Truth went on her pilgrimage unharmed. Whether she ever returned to the temple, no one knows. The priests say that she has never left it, and the uninitiated among them even believe it.

his face to the eyes with shaggy white hair. His beard hung weirdly to the knees as the gray moss from giant forest trees. Rough mats were his clothing, the bare ground his bed; never had he tasted other food than the roots of the field and its wild fruits. The spring that bubbled under the hill gave him to drink.

Fourscore years he had made his home in the forest with the holy hermits and had drunk in their wisdom. When he had buried his teachers he came back to offer the last and the saddest penance of all: to heal the ills and strive with the follies of suffering mankind. The people called him the Father of Wisdom.

He stood leaning on his crutch at the door of his hut when the Daughter of Truth passed by.

him hang it about his neck when he had thrice filled it at the spring and drunk from it.

The man cried out wildly that his wife had left him, and begged the seer to tell him where he should seek her. "But now

"Seek her not," he replied.

she went to make offering to the Goddess of Peace, whose grove no angry man's foot may tread."

The woman had been frightened by an evil dream, which she wished the wise man to interpret.

"When the moon yonder has waned and waxed full once more," he said, come back, and I will tell thee what thy dream portends."

The three thanked him, and were going their way, when the Daughter of Truth stepped forward.

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Stay," she cried, " and hear the truth. The sign that is written in the shell does not make it a charm. A drop of snake venom is dried in the shell. This, in the draught of water, is to heal thy body. The lost wife has not gone to the Grove of Peace with her gifts, but to her husband's enemy to make peace between them. And think not, wretched woman,

"A hearth that dare shelter the Truth," she made answer. "A sanctuary where they do not scorn it as at the King's castle, or bury it as in the temple." "Then enter here and be welcome," said the old man. "To me have kings bent the knee, and priests have sought refuge from death here. I fear nothing in the world, least of all the friend for whose coming I have longed ever since I learned what life was. To me speak freely the words of truth, be they harder than flint, sharper than thorns, and cut they deeper than the jagged leaf of the saw-palm. I know well that healing brings suffering.

While he spoke, three sufferers approached the cabin praying for help-a sick boy, an angry man, and a trembling woman. The boy begged for a charm to rid him of evil sores which covered his body. The patriarch considered his infirmity, made a sign in a shell, and bade

moon. He has read in your eye that before the moon turns the swart hollow of its shield to your sight, madness will have darkened your mind and put out its light forever."

At this speech, the three ran away, shrieking. But the old seer extended his staff over the fairy's head and cried:

"May thy lips be stricken dumb forever, thou daughter of cruelty! Dost thou not know that truth, which is life to the strong, is death to the weak? With these words thou hast undone these three poor wretches. The child will die of his distemper. With fear of the draught in which alone was healing thou hast bereft him of hope. The man will slay his wife in wrath when he finds her in his foeman's house; and the desperate woman goes to seek death in the river to escape the horror which thou hast discovered to her. Hence! Thy home is not in the house of mercy, but with those who know not compassion."

NWARD went the outcast on her weary pilgrimage. When night came she rested at the well in the great square. The dawn found her there still. Before her stood a man of gigantic stature. His glance was as the swift flight of the night-hawk, his hair like a lion's mane. A tiger's skin was his mantle. He carried a war-club on his shoulder, and in his belt two long knives.

"Why do you sit here?" he asked. "Because I have no home." "And why do they refuse you shelter?" "Because I speak the truth."

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So, too, did I; hence to-day I have no door to open to you. Like you I am an outcast with no place to lay my head, and never sleep twice in the same bed. But if you seek ears that can bear to hear the truth, then speak to mine. I am he whom they call the Foe of Liars.' I am the captain of the great brotherhood-the Thralls of Truth."

She told him what she had heard and seen at the castle, in the temple, and at the old seer's hut. He heard her in silence, but when she had told all, he shook his mane and said:

"Come here to-night when the stars are kindling. I will show you that the Truth has both servants and friends."

With that he was gone, and the Daughter of Truth went on her way alone. When the torch of day was quenched and night hung out its starry lamps, they met again at the well. The Foe of Liars took the hand of the maiden and led her forth without waste of words. Soon they stood in a desert plain, shut in by towering cliffs. Some hundreds of armed men were there. They were the tried yeomen of the brotherhood. They made a ring around their chief. Forthwith a multitude swarmed from the mountain gorges until the plain was filled.

Now the torches were lit, and the captain, who stood head and shoulders above the crowd, spoke. His voice was like

V

rolling thunder, and those who heard it shook with fear at the sound.

"Brothers," he cried, "is it not so that you have all loved the truth from your childhood, and desired to slake your thirst from its sacred fount?"

"Aye!" they shouted, each louder than his neighbor.

"Is it not so that the King's men, the priests, and the sages have sealed this fount, and that for every drop they have measured out to us poor devils they have made us pay with our sweat-yea! with our blood?"

"Aye, aye!" came from every side, louder than before.

"Is it not so that for the truth they have sold us the fable that the gods made them to command, us to obey; them to feast, us to toil; them to have, us to want?"

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Aye, aye! It is even so," they yelled, until the very hills shook.

"Rejoice, then, you Thralls of the Truth, and all who have shared our thraldom. To me, bondsman of the lowest among you, heaven has sent a messenger who has revealed to me that all that which the kings, the priests, and the sages sold us for truth is but fraud and lies."

He repeated what the maiden had told him at the well, but so that they heard but her words, not the sense of them.

"Hear now what I have told you, out of her own mouth," he cried, when he had done. At that two of his men lifted her upon a shield and placed it upon their shoulders.

When the multitude saw her standing there in the torch-light, the uproar that arose was as of a mighty tempest advancing.

"Speak, heaven-sent one, speak! We will do your bidding," they cried.

"Hear, then, misled men!" Her voice sounded loud and clear. "It is true that falsehood held sway in the King's house; that they knew not the words of the Gods in the temple; and that even the pious seer did not speak the truth. But now, now you shall hear it-"

"Heard you that?" shouted their captain.