strange warning note so clear that he caught it even amid the murmur of
their speech. Warning calls, and little furtive hiders in the leaves,
and a landscape of tapestried blurring carpeted with Botticelli
flower-strewn sward. It was all a dream. He felt quite sure of that.

* * * * *

It was a long while before curiosity awakened in him sufficiently to
make him break the stillness. But at last he asked dreamily,

"Where are we going?"

The girl seemed to understand that without the necessity of the bond her
hypnotic eyes made, for she turned and caught his eyes in a white stare
and answered,

"To Thag. Thag desires you."

"What is Thag?"

In answer to that she launched without preliminary upon a little
singsong monolog of explanation whose stereotyped formula made him
faintly uneasy with the thought that it must have been made very often
to attain the status of a set speech; made to many men, perhaps, whom
Thag had desired. And what became of them afterward? he wondered. But
the girl was speaking.

"Many ages ago there dwelt in Illar the great King Illar for whom the
city was named. He was a magician of mighty power, but not mighty enough
to fulfill all his ambitions. So by his arts he called up out of
darkness the being known as Thag, and with him struck a bargain. By that
bargain Thag was to give of his limitless power, serving Illar all the
days of Illar's life, and in return the king was to create a land for
Thag's dwelling-place and people it with slaves and furnish a priestess
to tend Thag's needs. This is that land. I am that priestess, the latest
of a long line of women born to serve Thag. The tree-people are his--his
lesser servants.

"I have spoken softly so that the tree-people do not hear, for to them
Thag is the center and focus of creation, the end and beginning of all
life. But to you I have told the truth."

"But what does Thag want of me?"

"It is not for Thag's servants to question Thag."

"Then what becomes, afterward, of the men Thag desires?" he pursued.

"You must ask Thag that."

She turned her eyes away as she spoke, snapping the mental bond that had
flowed between them with a suddenness that left Smith dizzy. He went on
at her side more slowly, pulling back a little on the tug of her
fingers. By degrees the sense of dreaminess was fading, and alarm began
to stir in the deeps of his mind. After all, there was no reason why he
need let this blank-e