rowan and the golden-brown hair!"

"Clearly of the Ranadae," said Marakinoff, "a development of the
fossil Labyrinthodonts: you saw her teeth, da?"

"Ranadae, yes," I answered. "But from the Stegocephalia; of the order
Ecaudata--"

Never such a complete indignation as was in O'Keefe's voice as he
interrupted.

"What do you mean--fossils and Stego whatever it is?" he asked. "She
was a girl, a wonder girl--a real girl, and Irish, or I'm not an
O'Keefe!"

"We were talking about the frog-woman, Larry," I said, conciliatingly.

His eyes were wild as he regarded us.

"Say," he said, "if you two had been in the Garden of Eden when Eve
took the apple, you wouldn't have had time to give her a look for
counting the scales on the snake!"

He strode swiftly over to the wall. We followed. Larry paused,
stretched his hand up to the flowers on which the tapering fingers of
the golden-eyed girl had rested.

"It was here she put up her hand," he murmured. He pressed
caressingly the carved calyxes, once, twice, a third time even as she
had--and silently and softly the wall began to split; on each side a
great stone pivoted slowly, and before us a portal stood, opening into
a narrow corridor glowing with the same rosy lustre that had gleamed
around the flame-tipped shadows!

"Have your gun ready, Olaf!" said Larry. "We follow Golden Eyes," he
said to me.

"Follow?" I echoed stupidly.

"Follow!" he said. "She came to show us the way! Follow? I'd follow
her through a thousand hells!"

And with Olaf at one end, O'Keefe at the other, both of them with
automatics in hand, and Marakinoff and I between them, we stepped over
the threshold.

At our right, a few feet away, the passage ended abruptly in a square
of polished stone, from which came faint rose radiance. The roof of
the place was less than two feet over O'Keefe's head.

A yard at left of us lifted a four-foot high, gently curved barricade,
stretching from wall to wall--and beyond it was blackness; an utter
and appalling blackness that seemed to gather itself from infinite
depths. The rose-glow in which we stood was cut off by the blackness
as though it had substance; it shimmered out to meet it, and was
checked as though by a blow; indeed, so strong was the suggestion of
sinister, straining force within the rayless opacity that I shrank
back, and Marakinoff with me. Not so O'Keefe. Olaf beside him, he
strode to the wall and peered over. He beckoned us.

"F