On the arrival of the sad cortege at the knight’s encampment they joined the procession escort of the doomed, among which were Sir O’Ham Ill Tong, and his squire, Kan Avan, who had been evidently condemned to the stake. As the gates of the northern barrier were obstructed by the occupation of the vestibule arena, in which the ants and spiders were engaged in an instinctive joust, the inquisitors in deference to the multitude awaited the decision of the contest; the latter, with reverence, giving place for them to witness the result of the sportive entertainment, as a prelude to their premeditated enactments. At the conclusion of the melée fight of the ants, in which the white champions had proved victorious, a large, whitish gray tarantula spider had been “pitted” against five mottled white ants, both parties having been subjected to a training abstinence from food to increase their ferocity. For a time the battle had been equally sustained, but a bold venture cost two of the ants their lives; in the feat the tarantula was maimed with the partial rupture of a carapace and the loss of the distal joints of two legs. Two of the remaining ants having a firm mandibular hold on the round carapace leg, the greatest excitement prevailed among the spectators, wagers being bantered between high and low; all distinctions of caste, for the time being, were banished by the talismanic greed for gold and silver. It soon became evident the auto-da-fe rites would be deferred until the result of the ant-fight was determined, for the order of procession was broken, the familiars with their human burdens crowding to gain a favorable position to witness the closing struggle. While the ants gnawed and swayed in hold upon the tarantula’s leg, he struggled to bring them within reach of his mandibles. The partial success of the assailants and assailed was greeted with vociferous shouts by the wager partisans, unabashed by the presence of the inquisitorial brotherhood and archiepiscopal dignitaries of the church. The tribune sadly reminded us, that the brutality of the scene was the tested ægis of democratic equality based upon individual or associate physical strength adroitly used,—chance advantages, or in massed subjection to the rule of selfish partisanship, as with ants in attacking the spider whose habits and interests in life interfered in no way with their own. But as you perceive, the hinds are so stupid in the dullness of their perceptions, that with the clear analogy of the cause and result of their own condition, in demonstration from the arbitrary power of physical strength that captured and forced the ants and spider into antagonistic collision, they fail to detect in the caste orders of priestcraft and knighthood the same motor influence in mental combination.