Then I left, and not too soon, for as I crept down the darksome passage, I heard it open behind me.
CHAPTER VIII
THE DEATH-HOUNDS
It may have been ten o’clock on the following morning, or a little past it, when the Shaman Simbri came into my room and asked me how I had slept.
“Like a log,” I answered, “like a log. A drugged man could not have rested more soundly.”
“Indeed, friend Holly, and yet you look fatigued.”
“My dreams troubled me somewhat,” I answered. “I suffer from such things. But surely by your face, friend Simbri, you cannot have slept at all, for never yet have I seen you with so weary an air.”
“I am weary,” he said, with a sigh. “Last night I spent up on my business—watching at the Gates.”
“What gates?” I asked. “Those by which we entered this kingdom, for, if so, I would rather watch than travel them.”
“The Gates of the Past and of the Future. Yes, those two which you entered, if you will; for did you not travel out of a wondrous Past towards a Future that you cannot guess?”
“But both of which interest you,” I suggested.