faint resonance was carried down, the last note
humming long in the tunnel of forest and fading out in slow-dying
vibrations.

Listening, he noted a change in the forest about him. Minutes passed,
and at last he realized that he was alone, the lurking figures had
been recalled. In the reaction fatigue came, and he wrapped himself in
the blanket and fell asleep.

At sunrise he was off again, climbing the mountain side, confident
that the recall of his midnight visitors had ended all dangers. The
night would see him at the summit.... APO!

But with the sense of personal security there came a deep apprehension
of what he would find at the end of his strange quest. His worry over
the fate of the friend for whom he had made this venture increased
with every hour. As the day wore on he fell into a panic of
foreboding, scarce noting that the forest had lost its sinister
aspects, had opened into a lovely wood of sun-splashed vistas broken
here and there by great rugs of thick grass which tempered the beat of
the afternoon sun striking through the openings above the frequent
clearings.

Suddenly he stopped, sniffing to identify the odor that had rapped at
his heedless nostrils for an hour. Disbelieving the testimony of his
sense of smell he scanned the woods for visual evidence, for the first
time taking in the quiet beauty of the scene. Finding the objects for
which he searched he exclaimed aloud in his wonder.

"Pines! Pines! Sus-marie-hosep!"

He drank in the bracing spice of the rare atmosphere, glorying in the
clear coolness of the altitude after the months of oppressive heat in
the lowlands.

"Real, honest-to-heaven pines--that puts me a clean mile above sea
level!"

Worry came again, and he turned to continue his ascent, but halted in
midstride as he discovered a form that stood, motionless, upon a
grassy plot a few rods above him. A Hillman confronted him!

Evidently a young fighting man, of small stature but wonderfully
developed of shoulder and limb, full chested and round of barrel, his
brown skin covered only with a red G-string, spear in hand, he
returned the Major's stare with a steady gaze of appraisal. For a long
minute he remained poised, then beckoned to the Major to follow him
and whirling with a flirt of his long black hair he led the way up the
acclivity, bearing to the right of the course the Major had taken.

The Major turned his back to the savage while he reached into his
shirt to put his p