people kick us and drive us forth with our garments rent.'

   He now humbly tapped at a door, and a strange voice cried,

   '

    Entrez!

   '

   Pellmelli (whose Russian is his strong point) paused in doubt, but I explained that the word was French for 'come in.'

   He crawled in on his stomach, while I followed him erect, and we found ourselves before a strange kind of tent. It had four posts, and a broidered veil was drawn all round it.

   Within the veil the sorcerer was concealed, and he asked in a gruff tone,

   'Wadyerwant?'

   Pellmelli explained that he had come to receive a brief personal statement for the Budget.

   The Voice replied, without hesitation, 'The Centuries and the Æons pass, and I too make the pass.

    Je saute la coupe

   ,' he added, in a foreign tongue. 'While thy race wore naught but a little blue paint, I dwelt among the forgotten peoples. The Red Sea knows me, and the Nile has turned scarlet at my words. I am Khoot Hoomi, I am also the Chela of the Mountain!'

   'Now it is my turn to ask

    you

   a few easy questions.

   'Who sitteth on the throne of Hokey, Pokey, Winky Wum, the Monarch of the Anthropophagi?

   'Have the Jews yet come to their land, or have the owners of the land gone to the Jews?

   'Doth Darius the Mede yet rule, or hath his kingdom passed to the Bassarids?'

   As Pellmelli was utterly floored by these inquiries (which indicated that the sorcerer had been for a considerable time out of the range of the daily papers), I answered them as well as I could.

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