Here he found a patch of flowering shrubbery that might
safely have concealed a dozen men.
Crawling well within he removed the uncomfortable headdress and
sat down to await whatever eventualities fate might have in store
for him the while he formulated plans for the future. The one
night that he had spent in A-lur had kept him up to a late hour,
apprising him of the fact that while there were few abroad in the
temple grounds at night, there were yet enough to make it possible
for him to fare forth under cover of his disguise without attracting
the unpleasant attention of the guards, and, too, he had noticed
that the priesthood constituted a privileged class that seemed to
come and go at will and unchallenged throughout the palace as well
as the temple. Altogether then, he decided, night furnished the
most propitious hours for his investigation--by day he could lie
up in the shrubbery of the Forbidden Garden, reasonably free from
detection. From beyond the garden he heard the voices of men calling
to one another both far and near, and he guessed that diligent was
the search that was being prosecuted for him.
The idle moments afforded him an opportunity to evolve a more
satisfactory scheme for attaching his stolen caudal appendage.
He arranged it in such a way that it might be quickly assumed or
discarded, and this done he fell to examining the weird mask that
had so effectively hidden his features.
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