d here,
hit them first and talk it over afterward. You'll do that?"

"We will!" the men said heartily.

"Shall we use our guns?" asked another hopefully.

Van Deventer grinned.

"No," he replied, "we haven't any excuse for that yet. But you might
shoot at the ceiling, if they get excited. They're just frightened!"

He took Arthur's arm, and the two walked toward the stairway again.

"Chamberlain," he said happily, "tell me why I've never had as much
fun as this before!"

Arthur smiled a bit wearily.

"I'm glad you're enjoying yourself!" he said. "I'm not. I'm going
outside and walk around. I want to see if any cracks have appeared
in the earth anywhere. It's dark, and I'll borrow a lantern down
in the fire-room, but I want to find out if there are any more
developments in the condition of the building."

X.

Despite his preoccupation with his errand, which was to find if
there were other signs of the continued activity of the strange
forces that had lowered the tower through the Fourth Dimension
into the dim and unrecorded years of aboriginal America, Arthur
could not escape the fascination of the sight that met his eyes. A
bright moon shone overhead and silvered the white sides of the tower,
while the brightly-lighted windows of the offices within glittered
like jewels set into the shining shaft.

From his position on the ground he looked into the dimness of the
forest on all sides. Black obscurity had gathered beneath the dark
masses of moonlit foliage. The tiny birch-bark teepees of the now
deserted Indian village glowed palely. Above, the stars looked
calmly down at the accusing finger of the tower pointing upward,
as if in reproach at their indifference to the savagery that reigned
over the whole earth.

Like a fairy tower of jewels the building rose. Alone among a
wilderness of trees and streams it towered in a strange beauty:
moonlit to silver, lighted from within to a mass of brilliant gems,
it stood serenely still.

Arthur, carrying his futile lantern about its base, felt his own
insignificance as never before. He wondered what the Indians must
think. He knew there must be hundreds of eyes fixed upon the strange
sight--fixed in awe-stricken terror or superstitious reverence upon
this unearthly visitor to their hunting grounds.

A tiny figure, dwarfed by the building whose base he skirted,
Arthur moved slowly about the vast pile. The earth seemed not to
have been affected by the vast