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due time.”
    After Barleycorn had left, Stagg said to Calthorp, “What nonsense is he trying to cover up?”
    The little man frowned. “Wish I knew. After all, my chances for an examination into the social mechanisms of this culture have been rather limited. It’s just that there is...”
    “There’s what?” Stagg said anxiously. Calthorp was looking very gloomy.
    “Tomorrow is the winter solstice. Midwinter—when the sun is weakest in the northern hemisphere and has reached its most southerly station. On the calendar we knew, it was December twenty-first or twenty-second. As near as I can remember, that was a very important date in prehistoric and even historic times. All sorts of ceremonies connected with it, such as... ahhh!”
    It was more a wail than an exclamation of sudden remembrance.
    Stagg became even more alarmed. He was about to ask him what was wrong, but he was interrupted by another blast from the band. The musicians and the attendants faced the door and fell on their knees.
    They cried in unison, “Chief Priestess, living flesh of Virginia, daughter of Columbia! Holy maiden! Beautiful one! Virginia, soon to lose to the raging stag—heedless, savage, tearing male—your sanctified and tender fold! Blessed and doomed Virginia!”
    A tall girl of eighteen walked haughtily into the apartment. She was beautiful, though she had a high-bridged nose and a very white face. Her full lips were red as blood. Her blue eyes were piercing and unflinching as a cat’s. Her curling honey-colored hair fell to her hips. She was Virginia, graduate of Vassar College for Oracular Priestesses and incarnate daughter of Columbia.
    “Hello, mortals,” she said in a high clear voice.
    She looked at Stagg.
    “Hello, immortal.”
    “Hello, Virginia,” he answered. He felt the blood spurting through his flesh and the ache building up in his chest and loins. Every time he met her, he experienced this almost irrepressible desire for her. He knew that if he were left alone with her, he would take her, no matter what the consequences.
    Virginia gave no sign that she was aware of her effect upon him. She regarded him with the cool unfaltering stare of a lioness.
    Virginia, like all mascots, was clothed in a high-necked and ankle-length garment, but her garment was covered with large pearls. A large triangular opening in the dress exposed her large but upthrusting breasts. The areola of each was rouged and circled by two rings of blue and white paint.
    “Tomorrow, immortal, you will become both Child and Lover of the Mother. Therefore, it is necessary that you prepare yourself.”
    “Just what do I have to do to prepare myself?” Stagg said. “And why should I?”
    He looked at her and ached through his whole body.
    She motioned with one hand. Instantly John Barleycorn, who must have been waiting around the corner, appeared. He now carried two bottles, the white lightning and some dark liquor. A priest-eunuch offered him a cup. He filled it with the dark stuff, and handed it to the priestess.
    “Only you, Father of Your Country, may drink this,” she said, giving the cup to Stagg. “This is the best. Made from the waters of the sticks.”
    Stagg took the cup. He looked at it dubiously, but he tried to be nonchalant. “Real mountain hooch, hey? Well, here goes. Never let anybody say that Peter Stagg couldn’t outdrink the best of them. Aaourrwhoosh!”
    The trumpets blew, the drums beat, the attendants clapped their hands and whooped.
    It was then that he heard Calthorp protesting. “Captain, you misunderstood! She didn’t say sticks. She said Styx. Waters of the S-T-Y-X! Get it?”
    Stagg had gotten it, but there was nothing he could do about it. The room whirled around and around, and darkness rushed in like a great black bat.
    Amid the trumpets and the cheering, he fell headlong toward the floor.

3
    “What a hangover!” Stagg groaned.
    “I’m afraid they do,” said a voice that Stagg faintly recognized as