"Oh, nothing of any importance," replied the American. "I was just thinking." He was thinking that the guiltiest of all had escaped—the sentry who had permitted Fou-tan to beguile him into allowing them to pass out of the palace into the garden. He guessed that this man would not be glad to see him return.
"So even now Lodivarman does not know how I escaped from the palace?" he demanded.
"No, but he will," replied the man with a sinister grin.
"What do you mean?" asked the American.
"I mean that before he kills you he will torture the truth from you."
"Evidently my stay in Lodidhapura is to be a pleasant one," he said.
"I do not know how pleasant it will be," replied the warrior; "but it will be short."
"Perhaps I shall be glad of that," said King.
"It will be short, man, but it will seem an eternity. I have seen men die before to satisfy Lodivarman's wrath."
From his captors King learned that his discovery had been purely accidental; the party that had stumbled upon him constituted a patrol, making its daily rounds through the jungle in the vicinity of Lodidhapura. And soon the great city itself arose before King's eyes, magnificent in its ancient glory, but hard as the stone that formed its temples and its towers, and hard as the savage hearts that beat behind its walls. Into its building had gone the sweat and the blood and the lives of a million slaves; behind its frowning walls had been enacted two thousand years of cruelties and bloody crimes committed in the names of kings and gods.