ground. But it
seems to me that there is a hiatus somewhere. Are there not mechanical
difficulties?"

"In what way?"

"Well, our antique monster must have been mighty heavy, and the distances
he had to travel were long and the ways difficult. From where we are now
sitting down to the level of the mud-holes is a distance of several
hundred feet--I am leaving out of consideration altogether any lateral
distance. Is it possible that there was a way by which a monster could
travel up and down, and yet no chance recorder have ever seen him? Of
course we have the legends; but is not some more exact evidence necessary
in a scientific investigation?"

"My dear Adam, all you say is perfectly right, and, were we starting on
such an investigation, we could not do better than follow your reasoning.
But, my dear boy, you must remember that all this took place thousands of
years ago. You must remember, too, that all records of the kind that
would help us are lacking. Also, that the places to be considered were
desert, so far as human habitation or population are considered. In the
vast desolation of such a place as complied with the necessary
conditions, there must have been such profusion of natural growth as
would bar the progress of men formed as we are. The lair of such a
monster would not have been disturbed for hundreds--or thousands--of
years. Moreover, these creatures must have occupied places quite
inaccessible to man. A snake who could make himself comfortable in a
quagmire, a hundred feet deep, would be protected on the outskirts by
such stupendous morasses as now no longer exist, or which, if they exist
anywhere at all, can be on very few places on the earth's surface. Far
be it from me to say that in more elemental times such things could not
have been. The condition belongs to the geologic age--the great birth
and growth of the world, when natural forces ran riot, when the struggle
for existence was so savage that no vitality which was not founded in a
gigantic form could have even a possibility of survival. That such a
time existed, we have evidences in geology, but there only; we can never
expect proofs such as this age demands. We can only imagine or surmise
such things--or such conditions and such forces as overcame them."

CHAPTER VI--HAWK AND PIGEON

At breakfast-time next morning Sir Nathaniel and Mr. Salton were seated
when Adam came hurriedly into the room.

"Any news?" asked his u