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52 sent it flying from his grasp before he could discharge it.

Instantly he drew his long-sword and thus evenly armed we set to in earnest for one of the closest battles I ever have fought.

The fellow was a marvelous swordsman and evidently in practice, while I had not gripped the hilt of a sword for ten long years before that morning.

But it did not take me long to fall easily into my fighting stride, so that in a few minutes the man began to realize that he had at last met his match.

His face became livid with rage as he found my guard impregnable, while blood flowed from a dozen minor wounds upon his face and body.

"Who are you, white man?" he hissed. "That you are no Barsoomian from the outer world is evident from your color. And you are not of us."

His last statement was almost a question.

"What if I were from the Temple of Issus?" I hazarded on a wild guess.

"Fate forfend!" he exclaimed, his face going white under the blood that now nearly covered it.

I did not know how to follow up my lead, but I carefully laid the idea away for future use should circumstances require it. His answer indicated that for all he knew I might be from the Temple of Issus, and so evidently there was a Temple of Issus and in it were men like unto myself, and either this man feared the inmates of the temple or else he held their