The cedar was a forest giant of immense proportions. It stood out in the splendid twilight black and overwhelming, for all its height was dwarfed by the lofty, tattered crowns of its aloofly respectful neighbours. It formed a wide canopy of shelter beneath its far-reaching boughs, matted with their manifold carpet of curious foliage. It was a shelter admirably suited to the ghostly scene being enacted beneath its shade.
Twenty white-robed, white-hooded figures stood in an unbroken circle at a point where the wide-flung boughs were at their greatest spread. Right above them, almost exactly bisecting their circle, a monstrous bough reached out supporting a dangling, rawhide rope which terminated in an ominous noose. Within a foot of this noose, gazing squarely at it, bound hand and foot, stood a white man prisoner.
For the moment complete silence prevailed while Cy Liskard’s pale eyes surveyed the thing with which he was confronted. He was sober enough now, and there was no lack of understanding in him. He knew he was the victim of no play game. For even he, comparative stranger as he was to the life of Beacon Glory, had heard of the doings of the men of the Aurora Clan.
He had offended. He realised that. He had offended these self-appointed custodians of the city’s morals, and he was searching acutely the doubtful chances confronting him.
His cold eyes passed over each silent figure in its white cloth gown. He sought to penetrate the conical hoods which enveloped each head, masking it completely and falling generously upon the shoulders. And all the time he was aware of the ugly thing which hung precisely at the level of his neck.
The futility of his search quickly impressed itself upon him. Bound fast, he was completely helpless. These people had left him with sufficient freedom to stand erect, but that was all. At length the silence, his own impotence, and the hideous threat of the dangling rope got the better of his none too generous stock of self-restraint. He stirred, and sought to twist his powerful arms free under their painful bonds. Then of a sudden his voice rang out sharply, harshly, in a characteristic challenge.
There was fury in his challenge. There was a shadow of something else in its violence. And as the sound of it died away the silence of the night came back at him, filling him with a sense of his own utter helplessness.