Part 19 (1/2)

We eed into the place of pillars There stood the hooded pony and its patience, its uncoht a lump into my throat, salved, I suppose, my human vanity, abased as it had been by the colossal indifference of those things to which ere but playthings

Again Norhala sent forth her call Out of the ain the four clicked into one Upon its top we lifted, Drake ascending first, the pony; then the body of Ventnor

I saw Norhala lead Ruth to the reirl break away fro at her brother's head, cradle it against her soft breast Then as I found in the medicine case the hypoder, I began my examination of Ventnor

The cubes quivered--swept away through the forest of colu that lay about us, heedless of whatever road of wonders ere on, striving to strengthen in Ventnor the spark of life so near extinction

CHAPTER XII ”I WILL GIVE YOU PEACE”

In our concentration upon Ventnor none of us had given thought to the passing of ti We stripped hied head and neck, Drake's strong fingers kneaded chest and abdomen I had used to the ute

We had found no mark nor burn upon hi flaiven way to a clear pallor; the skin was itself disquietingly cold, the blood-pressure only slightly subnor faint but regular, and with no laboring The pupils of his eyes were contracted alet no nervous reactions whatever I am familiar with the effects of electric shock and knohat to do in such cases, but Ventnor's symptoms, while similar in part, presented other features unknown toThere was a passive autoidity which caused ars, hands and head to remain, doll-like, in any position placed

Several ti down upon us; but she made no effort to help, nor did she speak

Now, an to receive and note i in the air, a dinetic tension; I sht about us was clear and pearly, about the intensity of the , I saw a halfcliffs, the gap between theh them we must have passed, for beyond theh this precipitous gateway filtered the enveloping lu and perpendicular scarps along whose base huddled a sparse foliage

There came a lohistle of astonish toward soe and shi+ up from and two-thirds above and the balance still hidden within earth

It sees of the gray-blue of the star sapphire, with pellucid azures and lazulis like clouded jades, with glistening peacock iridescences and tender, lobular and topaz, yellow and pierced with tiny hexagonal openings clustered about it like baby bubbles just nestling down to rest

Great trees shadowed it, unfalossy leaves blossomed in wreaths flowers pink and white as apple-blossoolden and scarlet and pear-shaped, hung pendulous

It was an elfin palace; a goblin dwelling; such a bower as soht have built frohter of earth

All of fifty feet in height was the blue globe, and up to a wide and ovaled entrance ran a broad and shi+ning roadway Along this the cubes swept and stopped

”My house,” murmured Norhala

The attraction that had held us to the surface of the blocks relaxed, angled through changed and assisting lines of force; the hosts of ently slid Ventnor's body; lifted down the pony

”Enter,” sighed Norhala, and waved a welco hand

”Tell her to wait a e fros, and led it to the side of the roadhere thick, lush grass was growing, spangled with flowerets There he hobbled it and rejoined us Together we picked up Ventnor and passed slowly through the portal

We stood in a shadowed chaht that filled it was translucent, and oddly enough with little of the bluish quality I had expected Crystalline it was; the shadows crystalline, too, rigid--like the facets of great crystals And as ht shadows actually were none