the great floor, holding the instrument delicately
poised, and still awaking its ravishing voice, stood a figure, the sight
of which almost stopped my breath.

It was a slender sylph of a girl!

A girl of my own race: a human being here upon the planet Mars!

Her hair was loosely coiled and she was attired in graceful white drapery.

"By ----!" cried Colonel Smith, "she's human!"

Chapter XII.

Still the bewildering strains of the music came to our ears, and yet we
stood there unperceived, though in the full glare of the chandelier.

The girl's face was presented in profile. It was exquisite in beauty,
pale, delicate with a certain pleading sadness which stirred us to
the heart.

An element of romance and a touch of personal interest such as we had
not looked for suddenly entered into our adventure.

Colonel Smith's mind still ran back to the perils of the plains.

A Human Prisoner.

"She is a prisoner," he said, "and by the Seven Devils of Dona Ana we'll
not leave her here. But where are the hellhounds themselves?"

Our attention had been so absorbed by the sight of the girl that we had
scarcely thought of looking to see if there was any one else in the room.

Glancing beyond her, I now perceived sitting in richly decorated chairs
three or four gigantic Martians. They were listening to the music as
if charmed.

The whole story told itself. This girl, if not their slave, was at any
rate under their control, and she was furnishing entertainment for them
by her musical skill. The fact that they could find pleasure in music
so beautiful was, perhaps, an indication that they were not really as
savage as they seemed.

Yet our hearts went out to the girl, and were turned against them with
an uncontrollable hatred.

They were of the same remorseless race with those who so lately had lain
waste our fair earth and who would have completed its destruction had
not Providence interfered in our behalf.

Singularly enough, although we stood full in the light, they had not
yet seen us.

Martians Guarding Her.

Suddenly the girl, moved by what impulse I know not, turned her face in
our direction. Her eyes fell upon us. She paused abruptly in her playing,
and her instrument dropped to the floor. Then she uttered a cry, and
with extended arms ran toward us.

But when she was near she stopped abruptly, the glad look fading from
her face, and started back with terror-stricken eyes, as if, after all,
sh