"Once," I said, "there was a daughter of the Didi, a girl you all feared: is she there now ?" He looked at me with suspicion and then shook his head.

I dared not press him with more questions; but after an interval he said plainly: "She is not there now." And I was forced to believe him; for had Rima been in the wood they would not have been there.

She was not there, this much I had discovered.

Had she, then, lost her way, or perished on that long journey from Riolama?
Or had she returned only to fall into the hands of her cruel enemies?
My heart was heavy in me; but if these devils in human shape knew more than they had told me, I must, I said, hide my anxiety and wait patiently to find it out, should they spare my life.

And if they spared me and had not spared that other sacred life interwoven with mine, the time would come when they would find, too late, that they had taken to their bosom a worse devil than themselves..