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screen it from the eyes of common men on foot, while horsemen could look over it. In the shade of the far wall a rug had been spread and groups of unveiled girls sat in noisy talk under guard of a giant swordsman.
    Tron uttered an exclamation of surprise and urged his horse through the open gate. He ran no risk in doing so, because these girls were certainly slaves, and as certainly placed here for sale, unveiled. One sat apart from the rest, and the sun struck upon the mass of her red-gold hair. Her drowsy eyes looked up at him curiously.
    When he asked a brief question, she answered in a low, clear voice. For a moment he weighed the worth of her beauty in his mind, and then, as the swordsman came up, turned away.
    "Eh," cried Mardi Dobro at the gate, "will your nobility not buy her away from that black dog, Yashim?"
    "Nay," said Tron impatiently, "she is only a mountain girl, a barbarian. Why did you lie, saying that she was of my people?"
    "Her hair is like yours. Such as she-these fair mountain women-are strong and faithful. She is worth a high price, and you may find a great profit in her."
    "I buy no slaves." The Genoese rubbed his saddlehorn with a gloved hand thoughtfully. "Why did you say, at the fire, that enemies were rising against Barka Khan?"
    Mardi Dobro held out his bowl, pointing to the sheep bone.
    "Eh, the fire itself spoke. By this sign-"
    With a grunt of impatience Tron brushed the bowl aside with his foot and rode off.
    "A man," the shaman muttered to himself, "who trusts his ears and not his eyes will come to a bad end."
    But as he stood in the alley, bowl in hand, he used his own ears which were keen as a hound's. He was following a scent where a hunting dog could not follow it, through a multitude of men. Listening, he heard a babble of voices on the embankment-a babble of many tongues-and he made his way toward it.
    His path was blocked by two men. One, with turban awry, stumbling at every other step, knelt at a command from the other, a Tatar soldier carrying a drawn saber. Before Mardi Dobro could pass, the Tatar placed himself behind the kneeling man and reached his free hand over the turban, catching two fingers in the other's nostrils. Then the soldier bent back the head without haste and thrust the curved edge of the saber across his victim's throat.
    "Agh-a-a-"
    A wild scream was choked off, and the Tatar executioner drew his sword free with a jerk, severing the backbone as he did so. He let the head fall, wiped his bloodied blade on the garments of the body and hastened toward the tumult. An execution mattered little; but brawling was forbidden by Barka Khan.
    Together, the soldier and Mardi Dobro came out on the embankment. At a table by a stairhead a Chinese secretary sat with his seals and record rolls. Around him had gathered a throng of interpreters and beggars. The Chinese officer, Mardi Dobro knew, was supposed to write down the names of all who came from the ships to the port, to list their occupations and destinations, whether they were Russian princes or negro slaves.
    But the man who stood before the bakshi-the officer-was a strange figure. Half a head he rose above the crowd, with a brown camel's-hair cloak hanging from his wide shoulders. He wore neither hat nor turban, and his sun-lightened hair fell to his shoulders. He leaned quietly on the top of a kite-shaped shield, upon which was the battered semblance of a lion.
    "He has no voice," cried the bakshi of the rolls. "He knows not Armenian or the speech of the U-luss."*
    And Mardi Dobro, who knew all the types of the caravan road, had never beheld one like this man without a voice. His darkened skin showed that he came from a hot country, yet his eyes were a clear blue. He bore himself like a man grown; but he was young, almost a boy.
    "Yah raJik," asked the shaman at a venture-for the cloak was of Arab work-"O man of the roads, art thou of the Arabs?"
    "Nay," the youth answered at once.
    "Was there ever," demanded the bakshi,