Adventure Magazine Cover — page 155: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

More than Half a King bent to the matting, divorced from the scene and from animate life as well; his face ice-cold, parchment-like, no visible pulse about the skinny temples to indicate that the heart was beating. To himself he repeated: - ‘‘Even as the rain penetrates the roof of a temple long uninhabited, so may passion enter the soul uninhabited by medita- tion—even as still water which has depos- ited its slime, let my soul rise, and seek the pathway to the Sun . VE Ko) moment, and then left the room. He realized that Kagamo had given him the morning to get the girl out of sight, or, failing in that, of taking the only other open course. As he crossed the temple yard he was too abstracted to notice that no priest wandered about or took comfort in the shade; the very pools reflected no form save, in passing, his own. . His feet made no sound in the path; he avoided the hot flagstones purposely, yet, as he passed between the great gate and a giant stone lantern, the beggar whispered— “For the lotus of Buddha, for the Lions of Shinto, alms that I may ascend the way of Purification!’ Clark fumbled for a coin, and put it in the bow] beside the beggar. “Bless me,” the beggar added. Clark smiled into the vacant eyes. ‘“‘Aye,”’ he said, and gave the short Shinto prayer. He added: ‘You have sharp ears. My footsteps made little sound.” — ‘“**Those whom the gods blind they also recompense,” the mendicant agreed in a thin voice. — Clark was thinking that the fellow’s ears were indeed keen, to have picked that from the priests’ discussions. By now the mis- sionary had reached that point where the circling hedges forming the outer wall of the temple yard converge closely, just past the gate, and out of sight of the temple buildings. “Tam thinking about everything save the true problem,” he muttered as he neared the point of convergence of the shrubs. A step or two more, and he reached the narrowest spot of the path, the bushes a bare arm’s length apart, the path concealed from temple and village street by a sudden turn. He paused here an instant, full of the CLARK stood doubtfully for a 149 thing which so troubled him; he lifted a foot to continue on his way, when a bare arm flicked out like a lizard’s tongue and the missionary disappeared into the green of the thicket. There was an instant’s rippling of the leaves, a sudden distortion of the hedge’s shadow on the hot dust of the path, pos- sibly a shake or two (moments later) of a branch nearer the temple. The temple yard itself remained empty of everything save heat. The beggar moved counter-clockwise into the shade of the gatepost, and propped his back against it. He listened intently, and the film of doddering blindness seemed to lift from his eyes. The sky was without cloud, and glowing white at the edge; he crossed his hands into a pillow and sprawled at ease. “Hai, but there is a something about,” he said lazily. ‘If it were not that Iam supposed to be blind, I would look into the matter. This trade of mine has its draw- backs. I have been discovered before, but there are plenty of temples to move on to. Ho! when I think of that fool Toyotama, who offered to pray for the restoring of my sight! and I almost became a priest! Toyo- tama—hmm—he kicked me this morning, and possibly with reason, although I do not know what it was; I said nothing to anger him. Mahl! but the rats play, while the abbot is a-praying—and I know it ” He was about to add that he did not care, and envied them the performance, when he turned half, and found Toyotama watching him out of one wicked eye. The priest had rolled, noiseless, out of the hedge which he had never left, as the others did with Clark; his face lay sidewise on his hands, an eye shrewdly on the beggar. The mendicant, frightened, considered him out of the corner of his own, wise enough in- stantly to attempt concealment. -As un- concernedly as he could he got up, stretched himself with elaborate ease, and strolled off along the edge of the thicket. Toyotama followed him; he affected not to know it and tapped a slow way with his staff: his heart began to quicken at the ceaseless cat-step behind, and—ten paces taken—when the priest was close to him he must turn and face the other. Toyotama pushed him against the hedge, and the mendicant laughed nervously. . The laugh stopped abruptly as an unseen COmicloolks (©