vow me by the sun, the moon, the stars, or by whatsoever, if only again I would not poke him with my sword. So came he most quietly."
"It was well done," quoth Batta. "There is yet some zebra. Regale yourself. The sauce, too, is good."
Then my ruler and I were left with the wizard.
"It has come to my ear," spake Batta, "that you live in a darksome cave beneath the hill that is before the sun, and work witchcraft, catching away my people's souls with thy black box. What say you, O Wizard?"
The wizard smiled, but his lips were of the color of sand.
"O Batta," thus spake he, "I am but a poor man. I gather simples, herbs in the woods. I do cook them over the burning of sticks and of the black-stone-which-burns-long. Thus do I extract their strength, and therewith do that which to common men seems strange."
"But," said Batta, "all this is naught. What of the box—the soul-catcher?"
"It is but a picture-box," said the wizard. "It is curiously wrought, and will do in a winking of your royal eyelid more than a cunning worker in paint can do from dawn to dark."
"But," again spoke Batta, "that is witchcraft."
"Nay, great ruler," replied the wizard, " it is no witchcraft, and it harms no one."
"I fear me," said the ruler, making as he spoke a sniffing' with his nose, "that there is the smell of enchantment about thee."
"Pardon, wise ruler," replied he of the box; "that is but the odor of herb-extracts I use in making images."
"And the stains upon thy hands?" asked the keen-eyed, the wise Batta.
"The same extracts," replied the wizard. "I can hardly remove them, though I wash me until I am weary with washing."
4
