"He must be within," said Nanna, leading the way. "Don't stumble around like that. Here, take my hand."
Prostrate in front of the switch-board they found the priest, a mere anatomy of a man, with his checks shrunken to the jaw, and his wasted limbs no larger than those of a child. Yet he was alive and conscious, the deep-set eyes glowing with suspicious fire as they turned upon his unexpected guests.
"Starving," said Nanna, briefly, and proceeded to force a few drops of wine from a pocket-flask between his lips, while Esmay ran for the basket of food which had been brought along as an offertory in their assumed character of worshippers. The stimulant acted powerfully, and within the hour Prosper was so far restored as to be able to partake of some solid food. Then he insisted upon getting to his feet, a gaunt and terrible figure in his rusty cassock.
"I have my work to do," he reiterated, stubbornly. "I must be preparing the harvest field for my lord's sickle, and already the time is ripe for his appearing. Behold and believe!"
With a firm step he approached the switch-board and turned one of the controlling levers. A flash of light, succeeded by a stream of crackling sparks, leaped from the free end of a broken wire at the other end of the building, and a pile of straw lying near it burst into flame. An expert in electrical engineering would have understood that the broken wire must be in proximity to a mass of metal, and that the powerful current was being visibly hurled across the gap. Esmay uttered a cry, and even Nanna shrank back. Prosper smiled.
"Who can abide the displeasure of the Shining One? Who can stand before the flame of his wrath? A mighty and a terrible god, yet he would have left his servant to starve before his altar—you have seen that for yourselves. It is ten days now since even a woman has condescended to kneel at his shrine and make her offerings of meat and drink. I, his high-priest, may eat no common food, but how should the lord of heaven and earth keep such trivial circumstances in mind? He had forgotten, and so I must have died but for your opportune coming and pious gifts.
"One might argue that our lord employed you as the instruments of my deliverance," continued the priest, musingly. "I might think it, but that I know the Shining One of old. It is his pleasure to punish, not to help; to slay and not to make alive. Never has he given aught of grace to me who have served him faithfully for these threescore years. And to-day, if I should sit with him upon the death-chair, he would consume me as utterly as though I were the foulest-mouthed blasphemer in all Doom. What think ye, in all honesty, of the Shining One? Is he a god to be propitiated by sacrifice and offering, to be worshipped and adored—supreme, almighty, everlasting? Or are we but blind fools, trembling before a blind force that knows and sees and is nothing, except as we, its lords and masters, may compel it to work our will?"
The muttering of thunder broke in upon the priest's last words. A storm-cloud was driving in from the west, low-hanging and menacing. The priest's face changed.
"He comes! he comes!" he continued, with fanatic intensity. "This is our lord, in very truth, who now stands before us, calling upon his people to turn to him ere it be too late. Yet three days, and Doom, Doom the Mighty, is fallen, is fallen! He has said it—yet three days."
The two women stayed neither to see nor to listen further. Hand-in-hand they gained the street and ran in the direction of the Citadel Square, heedless of the rain that was now beginning to fall. Several blocks away they paused, exhausted, compelled to seek shelter in a doorway from the fury of the storm. Some one was already there—a man. He turned as they entered, and Esmay saw that it was Ulick.