“Here yer are, miss! Las’ call ter lunch! Forw’d cyar on yer right! Hop right aboard while de hoppin’s good! On’y line what issers free passes ter N’York! Step lively an’ avoid de rush! All clear ahead, no sidin’s nor interference!” He had dismounted and taken his place on the left, with his hand ready to assist her in mounting. “Put yer foot here, miss, an’ up yer goes! Are yer on? Firs’ stop, Sattum, an’ de boss waitin’ fer yer on de platform. So-long!”
“But you must ride behind me, Jim!” said Miriam, holding out a hand to help him to the crupper. The creatures were closing round them.
Jim recoiled with an air of injured dignity. “Say, miss, fer de sake o’ Mike, git busy wid yerself! What, me? Is I de sort ter take de boss’s place, I arsks yer? Me, I takes me time, see! Jes’ you leave dese here slumgullions ter me! Say, cleanin’ up a bunch like dat is me middle name! An’ I’ll lan’ in N’York befo’ you does, at dat!”
Miriam felt that there was no leisure to parley. She stooped down quickly and caught the little anatomy round the body. But even as she lifted him to the saddle, a heavy stone, hurled with deadly aim and tremendous force, struck the boy just over the heart. He gave a gasp, and lay limp across her saddle-bow. The horse bounded into the air.
A blaze of light, spanning the heavens from east to west, arched across overhead—Lamara’s sign of the ring to the Saturnians. The whole stupendous circle had burst into dazzling flame. That appalling splendor sent its rays throughout the firmament. Simultaneously, Miriam saw the solid globe from whose surface she had just risen rock and lurch like a balloon straining at its moorings. It seemed to be endowed with a terrible life; it yawed and plunged this way and that; groanings broke from it; the peaks and crags were overthrown in ruin; the boiling rivers were tossed from their channels and emptied into the belching craters of the volcanoes; and the Bitter Sea, rushing from its bed, poured its flood over the city and its people. It whirled around the castle, deep down in whose rock-quarried crypt the crazed desperado had set in motion the huge wheels of his impious engine. The waters beat upon the walls and towers; they tottered and crumbled, and, whirling as they fell, buried their builder beneath a pyramid of shattered stone.
But, as Miriam still rose aloft, she saw the vast sphere of Saturn outspread beneath her. Upon its surface, revealed in the intense light of the blazing arch, the myriads of the Saturnians performed in concert the evolutions of their mystic rite. They covered the face of the sphere like a network of many colored strands, ceaselessly shifting and reforming in harmonious figures; a living web, through whose threads coursed the single will and impulse to master disorder with order, darkness with light, hate with love. The great globe was clothed with a lovely iridescence, the mingling hues of which united in white shafts of light, bearing in their bosom the invisible rays of spiritual energy which should counteract and overcome the profane forces of dissolution. Slowly but irresistibly the gigantic struggle issued in the victory of law and peace, and the infernal armies of rebellion and chaos gave way before the might of their opponents. Miriam saw the throes and heavings of tortured Tor gradually subside, and the planet resumed the steadfast track of its orbit. The embassy of Zarga, faithfully fulfilled, had not failed of its object.
A hand was at her bridle rein, though invisible to her sight; but she yielded with confidence to its guidance.
“Dearest,” she said, “must that draft which you accepted for my sake from Solarion part us on earth henceforth, or may we be fully reunited here?”
“I took the risk, beloved,” he replied. “What will be the outcome I cannot tell. We love each other, and love’s gains must always be greater than its sacrifices, for any sacrifice in that cause can but give each of us to the other the more. But it seems to me that the halo of which Lamara told me must be the reward of a soul so loyal, loving, and magnanimous as to give all for the sole happiness of giving. No other gift is pure enough to be divine.”
Tears gushed to Miriam’s eyes; and she bent down and kissed the forehead of the little gnome who lay lifeless across her saddle.