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As Cumner’s Son came forth into the path the hills men and artillery cheered him, the native troops took it up, and it was answered by the people in all the thoroughfare.

Pango Dooni had also seen the kris thrown at himself, but he could not escape it, though he half swung round. It struck him in the shoulder, and quivered where it struck, but he drew it out and threw it down. A hillsman bound up the wound, and he rode on to the Tomb.

The Dakoon was placed in his gorgeous house of death, and every man cried: “Sleep, lord of the earth!” Then Cumner stood up in his saddle, and cried aloud:

“To-morrow, when the sun stands over the gold dome of the Palace, ye shall come to hear your Dakoon speak in the hall of the Heavenly Hours.”

No man knew from Cumner’s speech who was to be Dakoon, yet every man in Mandakan said in the quiet of his home that night:

“To-morrow Pango Dooni will be Dakoon. We will be as the stubble of the field before him. But Pango Dooni is a strong man.”

VII. THE RED PLAGUE

“He promised he’d bring me a basket of posies,
A garland of lilies, a garland of roses,
A little straw hat to set off the blue ribbons
That tie up my bonnie brown hair.”

This was the song McDermot sang to himself as he walked up the great court-yard of the Palace, past the lattice windows, behind which the silent women of the late Dakoon’s household still sat, passive and grief-stricken. How knew they what the new Dakoon would do–send them off into the hills, or kill them? McDermot was in a famous humour, for he had just come from Pango Dooni, the possessor of a great secret, and he had been paid high honour. He looked round on the court-yard complacently, and with an air of familiarity and possession which seemed hardly justified by his position. He noted how the lattices stirred as he passed through this inner court-yard where few strangers were ever allowed to pass, and he cocked his head vaingloriously. He smiled at the lizards hanging on the foundation stones, he paused to dip his finger in the basin of a fountain, he eyed good-humouredly the beggars–old pensioners of the late Dakoon–seated in the shade with outstretched hands. One of them drew his attention, a slim, cadaverous-looking wretch who still was superior to his fellows, and who sat apart from them, evidently by their wish as much as by his own.

McDermot was still humming the song to himself as he neared the group; but he stopped short, as he heard the isolated beggar repeat after him in English:

“He promised he’d bring me a bunch of blue ribbons,
To tie up my bonnie brown hair.”

He was startled. At first he thought it might be an Englishman in disguise, but the brown of the beggar’s face was real, and there was no mistaking the high narrow forehead, the slim fingers, and the sloe-black eyes. Yet he seemed not a native of Mandakan. McDermot was about to ask him who he was, when there was a rattle of horse’s hoofs, and Cumner’s Son galloped excitedly up the court-yard.

“Captain, captain,” said he, “the Red Plague is on the city!”

McDermot staggered back in consternation. “No, no,” cried he, “it is not so, sir!”

“The man, the first, lies at the entrance of the Path by the Bazaar. No one will pass near him, and all the city goes mad with fear. What’s to be done? What’s to be done? Is there no help for it?” the lad cried in despair. “I’m going to Pango Dooni. Where is he? In the Palace?”

McDermot shook his head mournfully, for he knew the history of this plague, the horror of its ravages, the tribes it had destroyed.