startles the uninitiated into the belief that a hidden rattler lurks in the pathway; but when the great diamond back breaks forth in warning none mistakes him for a locust.
And so is it with the death rattle in the human throat.
Thandar knew that it was the end. He saw the old man’s mighty effort to push back the grim reaper that he might speak once more. In the dying eyes were a question and a plea. Thandar could not misunderstand.
He reached forward and took Nadara’s hand.
“In my own land we shall be mated,” he said. “None other shall wed with Nadara, and as proof that she is Thandar’s she shall wear this always,” and from his finger he slipped a splendid solitaire to the third finger of Nadara’s left hand.
The old man saw. A look of relief and contentment that was almost a smile settled upon his features, as, with a gasping sigh, he sank limply into Thandar’s arms, dead.
That afternoon several of the younger men carried the body of Nadara’s foster father to the top of the cliff, depositing it about half a mile from the caves. There was no ceremony. In it, though, Waldo Emerson saw what might have been the first human funeral cortege—simple, sensible and utilitarian—from which the human race has retro-
