"I never thought much about
that. I have tried not to. It frightened me--until to-night."

She pushed me gently away. "Don't. Let's not talk of him. I'd rather
not."

"But why are you dressed as a boy?"

I gazed at her slim but rounded figure in tattered boy's garb--but the
woman's lines were unmistakable. And her face, with clustering curls.
Gentle girlhood. A face of dark, wild beauty.

"My father hates women. He says they are all bad. It is a sin to wear
woman's finery; or it breeds sin in women. Let's not talk of that.
Philip, tell me--oh, if you could only realize all the things I want to
know. In Great New York, there are theatres and music?"

"Yes," I said. And began telling her about them.

The witching of this moonlit garden! But the moon had presently sunk,
and to the east the stars were fading.

"Philip! Look! Why, it's dawn already. I've got to leave you."

I held her just a moment by the hand.

"May I meet you here to-morrow night?" I asked.

"Yes," she said simply.

"Good night--Jetta."

"Good night. You--you've made me very happy."

She was gone, into a doorway of the opposite wing. The silent, empty
garden sounded with the distant, reassuring snores of the still sleeping
Spawn.

I went back to my room and lay on my bed. And drifted off on a sea of
magic memories. The world--my world before this night--now seemed to
have been so drab. Empty. Lifeless. But now there was pulsing, living
magic in it for me.

I drifted into sleep, thinking of it.

CHAPTER IV

_The Mine in the Cauldron Depths_

I was awakened by the tinkling, buzzing call of the radio-diaphragm
beneath my shirt. I had left the call open.

It was Hanley. I lay down, eyeing my window which now was illumined by
the flat light of dawn.

Hanley's microscopic voice:

"Phil? I've just raised President Markes, there in Nareda. I've been a
bit worried about you."

"I'm all right, Chief."

"Well, you'd better see President Markes this morning."

"That was my intention."

"Tell him frankly what you're after. This smuggling of quicksilver from
Nareda has got to stop. But take it easy, Phil; don't be reckless.
Remember: one little knife thrust and I've lost a good man!"

I laughed at his anxious tone. That was always Hanley's way. A devil
himself, when he was on a trail, but always worried for fear one of his
men would come to harm.

"Right enough, Chief. I'll be careful."

He cut off presently.

I did not