mountains," said Chiu-Ming. "On the far side is his
other footprint. Shin-je it was who strode the mountains and set here
his foot."

Again I interpreted.

Drake cast a calculating glance up to the cliff top.

"Two thousand feet, about," he mused. "Well, if Shin-je is built in our
proportions that makes it about right. The length of this thing would
give him just about a two thousand foot leg. Yes--he could just about
straddle that hill."

"You're surely not serious?" I asked in consternation.

"What the hell!" he exclaimed, "am I crazy? This is no foot mark. How
could it be? Look at the mathematical nicety with which these edges are
stamped out--as though by a die--

"That's what it reminds me of--a die. It's as if some impossible power
had been used to press it down. Like--like a giant seal of metal in a
mountain's hand. A sigil--a seal--"

"But why?" I asked. "What could be the purpose--"

"Better ask where the devil such a force could be gotten together and
how it came here," he said. "Look--except for this one place there isn't
a mark anywhere. All the bushes and the trees, all the poppies and the
grass are just as they ought to be.

"How did whoever or whatever it was that made this, get here and
get away without leaving any trace but this? Damned if I don't think
Chiu-Ming's explanation puts less strain upon the credulity than any I
could offer."

I peered about. It was so. Except for the mark, there was no slightest
sign of the unusual, the abnormal.

But the mark was enough!

"I'm for pushing up a notch or two and getting into the gorge before
dark," he was voicing my own thought. "I'm willing to face anything
human--but I'm not keen to be pressed into a rock like a flower in a
maiden's book of poems." Just at twilight we drew out of the valley into
the pass. We traveled a full mile along it before darkness forced us to
make camp. The gorge was narrow. The far walls but a hundred feet away;
but we had no quarrel with them for their neighborliness, no! Their
solidity, their immutability, breathed confidence back into us.

And after we had found a deep niche capable of holding the entire
caravan we filed within, ponies and all, I for one perfectly willing
thus to spend the night, let the air at dawn be what it would. We dined
within on bread and tea, and then, tired to the bone, sought each his
place upon the rocky floor. I slept well, waking only once or twice
by Chiu-Ming's groanings; his drea