-I--I glowed--all through.

"Human, yes--but there is something else in her--something stronger than
humanness, something that--makes it sleep!" she added astonishingly.

The ground was level as a dancing floor. We followed the enigmatic
glow--emanation, it seemed to me--from Norhala which was as a light
for us to follow within the darkness. The high ribbon of sky had
vanished--seemed to be overcast, for I could see no stars.

Within the darkness I began again to sense faint movement; soft stirring
all about us. I had the feeling that on each side and behind us moved an
invisible host.

"There's something moving all about us--going with us," Ruth echoed my
thought.

"It's the wind," I said, and paused--for there was no wind.

From the blackness before us came a succession of curious, muffled
clickings, like a smothered mitrailleuse. The luminescence that clothed
Norhala brightened, deepening the darkness.

"Cross!"

She pointed into the void ahead; then, as we started forward, thrust
out a hand to Ruth, held her back. Drake and Ventnor drew close to them,
questioningly, anxious. But I stepped forward, out of the dim gleaming.

Before me were two cubes; one I judged in that uncertain light to be
six feet high, the other half its bulk. From them a shaft of pale-blue
phosphorescence pierced the murk. They stood, the smaller pressed
against the side of the larger, for all the world like a pair of immense
nursery blocks, placed like steps by some giant child.

As my eyes swept over them, I saw that the shining shaft was an unbroken
span of cubes; not multi-arched like the Lilliputian bridge of the
dragon chamber, but flat and running out over an abyss that gaped at
my very feet. All of a hundred feet they stretched; a slender, lustrous
girder crossing unguessed depths of gloom. From far, far below came the
faint whisper of rushing waters.

I faltered. For these were the blocks that had formed the body of the
monster of the hollow, its flailing arms. The thing that had played so
murderously with the armored men.

And now had shaped itself into this anchored, quiescent bridge.

"Do not fear." It was the woman speaking, softly, as one would reassure
a child. "Ascend. Cross. They obey me."

I stepped firmly upon the first block, climbed to the second. The
span stretched, sharp edged, smooth, only a slender, shimmering line
revealing where each great cube held fast to the other.

I walked at first slowly, then w