h such a place, or, having reached it, could ever descend to
the world again to give aid to any person or thing.

Her old face was crossed and recrossed with a thousand wrinkles. Her
profile was splendid yet and she had been a beauty in her day. Her
eyes were like an eagle's--and not an old eagle's. And she had a long
neck which held her old head high.

"How could she get here?" exclaimed The Rat.

"Those who sent us know, though we don't," said Marco. "Will you sit
here and rest while I go on further?"

"No!" The Rat answered stubbornly. "I didn't train myself to stay
behind. But we shall come to bare-rock climbing soon and then I shall
be obliged to stop," and he said the last bitterly. He knew that, if
Marco had come alone, he would have ridden in no cart but would have
trudged upward and onward sturdily to the end of his journey.

But they did not reach the crags, as they had thought must be
inevitable. Suddenly half-way to the sky, as it seemed, they came to a
bend in the road and found themselves mounting into a new green
world--an astonishing marvel of a world, with green velvet slopes and
soft meadows and thick woodland, and cows feeding in velvet pastures,
and--as if it had been snowed down from the huge bare mountain crags
which still soared above into heaven--a mysterious, ancient, huddled
village which, being thus snowed down, might have caught among the
rocks and rested there through all time.

There it stood. There it huddled itself. And the monsters in the blue
above it themselves looked down upon it as if it were an incredible
thing--this ancient, steep-roofed, hanging-balconied, crumbling cluster
of human nests, which seemed a thousand miles from the world. Marco
and The Rat stood and stared at it. Then they sat down and stared at
it.

"How did it get here?" The Rat cried.

Marco shook his head. He certainly could see no explanation of its
being there. Perhaps some of the oldest villages could tell stories of
how its first chalets had gathered themselves together.

An old peasant driving a cow came down a steep path. He looked with a
dull curiosity at The Rat and his crutches; but when Marco advanced and
spoke to him in German, he did not seem to understand, but shook his
head saying something in a sort of dialect Marco did not know.

"If they all speak like that, we shall have to make signs when we want
to ask anything," The Rat said. "What will she speak?"

"She will know th