be shall come here. And we shall be the masters of all
things."

Once more the girl threw herself at his feet. He seemed to her a god.
But remembering how she had twice saved his life, she laid her cheek
against his knee. He lifted her into the hollow of his great arm, and
she leaned against him, gazing up into his face, while he stood
staring into the fire, his eyes clouded with visions.

CHAPTER IV

THE CHILDREN OF THE SHINING ONE

I

From the lip of the narrow volcanic fissure, which ran diagonally
two-thirds of the way across the mouth of the valley, the line of fire
waved and flickered against the gathering dark. Sometimes only a few
inches high, sometimes sinking suddenly out of sight, and then again
as suddenly leaping up to a height of five or six feet, the thin,
gaseous flames danced elvishly. Now clear yellow, now fiery orange,
now of an almost invisible violet, they shifted, and bowed their
crests, and thrust out shooting tongues, till Grom, sitting on his
haunches and staring with fascinated eyes, had no choice but to
believe that they were live things like himself. The girl, curled up
at his side like a cat, paid little attention to the marvel of the
flames. Her big, dark eyes, wild and furtive under the dark, tangled
masses of her hair, kept wandering back and forth between the man's
brooding face and the obscure black thickets which filled the valley
behind him. The dancing flames she did not understand, but she
understood the ponderous crashing, and growls, and savage cries which
came from those black thickets and slopes of tumbled rocks. The man
being absorbed in watching the wonders of the flames, and apparently
all-forgetful of the perils prowling back there in the dark, it was
plainly her duty to keep watch.

From time to time Grom would drag his eyes away from their contemplation
of the flames to study intently the charred spots on his club and the
burned, blackened end of his spear. He looked down at the lithe figure of
the watching girl, and laid a great, hairy hand on her shoulder in a musing
caress, as if appraising her, and delighting in her, and finding in her
a mate altogether to his desire, although but a child to his inmost
thoughts. But those sounds of menace from the darkness behind him he
affected not to hear at all. He could see from the girl's eyes that the
menace was not yet close at hand; and since he had learned the power of the
fire, and his own mastery over that po