t felt warm to Graham's benurrled feet, and a
faint eddy of steam rose from it.

"Come on!" shouted his guide ten yards off, and, without waiting, ran
swiftly through the incandescent glare towards the iron supports of the
next range of wind-wheels. Graham, recovering from his astonishment,
followed as fast, convinced of his imminent capture.

In a score of seconds they were within a tracery of glare and black
shadows shot with moving bars beneath the monstrous wheels. Graham's
conductor ran on for some time, and suddenly darted sideways and
vanished into a black shadow in the corner of the foot of a huge
support. In another moment Graham was beside him.

They cowered panting and stared out.

The scene upon which Graham looked was very wild and strange. The snow
had now almost ceased; only a belated flake passed now and again across
the picture. But the broad stretch of level before them was a ghastly
white, broken only by gigantic masses and moving shapes and lengthy
strips of impenetrable darkness, vast ungainly Titans of shadow. All
about them, huge metallic structures, iron girders, inhumanly vast as it
seemed to him, interlaced, and the edges of wind-wheels, scarcely moving
in the lull, I passed in great shining curves steeper and steeper up
into a luminous haze. Wherever the snow-spangled light struck down,
beams and girders, and incessant bands running with a halting,
indomitable resolution passed upward and downward into the black. And
with all that mighty activity, with an omnipresent sense of motive and
design, this snow-clad desolation of mechanism seemed void of all
human presence save themselves, seemed as trackless and deserted and
unfrequented by men as some inaccessible Alpine snowfield.

"They will be chasing us," cried the leader. "We are scarcely halfway
there yet. Cold as it is we must hide here for a space--at least until
it snows more thickly again."

His teeth chattered in his head.

"Where are the markets?" asked Graham staring out. "Where are all the
people?"

The other made no answer.

"Look!" whispered Graham, crouched close, and became very still.

The snow had suddenly become thick again, and sliding with the whirling
eddies out of the black pit of the sky came something, vague and large
and very swift. It came down in a steep curve and swept round, wide
wings extended and a trail of white condensing steam behind it, rose
with an easy swiftness and went gliding up the air, swep