and the royal signet,
“Lah.”
I scanned the words with all care. Then my eager fingers sought the fallen pellet, but, in my haste I jarred the cage so that the little ball rolled over the edge, and was gone.
As I gazed upon it, lying there on the bare earth not four feet away, but as much out of my reach as though the world’s breadth was between it and me, a dog came up, one of the many that hunt for scraps and offal among the refuse of the market-place. One of these scraps, a strip of dried beef, I think it was, lay, as luck would have it, close to my treasure. The half-starved brute greedily seized on the fragment, and his long tongue licked up as well the pellet,—gift to me from the Queen.
With a wrathful cry I shook my clenched hand at the already retreating brute.
He was not three paces off, but almost on the instant a convulsive tremor seized upon the creature. The mongrel’s legs stiffened, he raised his head and gave a despairing howl, a sound choked in the uttering; for, with another shuddering spasm, he dropped and lay still.
A cry of terror rose from the multitude.
“Behold, the captive looked upon the dog in anger, and he is dead! Let us leave this place! Let us fly!”
A panic seized the people at the words. Women snatched up their offspring, covering them from harm beneath their mantles. Strong men trampled upon the weak, that they might escape.
The crowd melted away as if by magic. The sun beat down pitilessly as before, but on an empty market-place. Empty, save for the hapless prisoner crouched within his cage, and for the dead body of the brute beside it,—victim to the mercy of Lah, the Queen.