ields, their great bows, their javelins and armor.

"They passed; we doubled. We built no fires that night--and we ought to
have turned the pony loose, but we didn't. It carried my instruments,
and ammunition, and I felt we were going to need the latter.

"The next morning we caught sight of another band--or the same. We
turned again. We stole through a tree-covered plain; we struck an
ancient road. It led south, into the peaks again. We followed it. It
brought us here.

"It isn't, as you observe, the most comfortable of places. We struck
across the hollow to the crevice--we knew nothing of the entrance
you came through. The hollow was not pleasant, either. But it was
penetrable, then.

"We crossed. As we were about to enter the cleft there issued out of it
a most unusual and disconcerting chorus of sounds--wailings, crashings,
splinterings."

I started, shot a look at Dick; absorbed, he was drinking in Ventnor's
every word.

"So unusual, so--well, disconcerting is the best word I can think of,
that we were not encouraged to proceed. Also the peculiar unpleasantness
of the hollow was increasing rapidly.

"We made the best time we could back to the fortress. And when next
we tried to go through the hollow, to search for another outlet--we
couldn't. You know why," he ended abruptly.

"But men in ancient armor. Men like those of Darius." Dick broke the
silence that had followed this amazing recital. "It's incredible!"

"Yes," agreed Ventnor, "isn't it. But there they were. Of course, I
don't maintain that they WERE relics of Darius's armies. They might have
been of Xerxes before him--or of Artaxerxes after him. But there they
certainly were, Drake, living, breathing replicas of exceedingly ancient
Persians.

"Why, they might have been the wall carvings on the tomb of Khosroes
come to life. I mention Darius because he fits in with the most
plausible hypothesis. When Alexander the Great smashed his empire he did
it rather thoroughly. There wasn't much sympathy for the vanquished
in those days. And it's entirely conceivable that a city or two in
Alexander's way might have gathered up a fleeting regiment or so for
protection and have decided not to wait for him, but to hunt for cover.

"Naturally, they would have gone into the almost inaccessible heart of
the high ranges. There is nothing impossible in the theory that they
found shelter at last up here. As long as history runs this has been
a well-nigh unknown la