his
apparently illimitable forest through which she had ridden for so many
days.

A narrow ridge formed a natural ramp that led up the steep face of the
crag. After she had ascended some fifty feet she came to the belt of
leaves that surrounded the rock. The trunks of the trees did not crowd
close to the crag, but the ends of their lower branches extended about
it, veiling it with their foliage. She groped on in leafy obscurity, not
able to see either above or below her; but presently she glimpsed blue
sky, and a moment later came out in the clear, hot sunlight and saw the
forest roof stretching away under her feet.

She was standing on a broad shelf which was about even with the
tree-tops, and from it rose a spire-like jut that was the ultimate peak
of the crag she had climbed. But something else caught her attention at
the moment. Her foot had struck something in the litter of blown dead
leaves which carpeted the shelf. She kicked them aside and looked down
on the skeleton of a man. She ran an experienced eye over the bleached
frame, but saw no broken bones nor any sign of violence. The man must
have died a natural death; though why he should have climbed a tall crag
to die she could not imagine.

* * * * *

She scrambled up to the summit of the spire and looked toward the
horizons. The forest roof--which looked like a floor from her
vantage-point--was just as impenetrable as from below. She could not
even see the pool by which she had left her horse. She glanced
northward, in the direction from which she had come. She saw only the
rolling green ocean stretching away and away, with only a vague blue
line in the distance to hint of the hill-range she had crossed days
before, to plunge into this leafy waste.

West and east the view was the same; though the blue hill-line was
lacking in those directions. But when she turned her eyes southward she
stiffened and caught her breath. A mile away in that direction the
forest thinned out and ceased abruptly, giving way to a cactus-dotted
plain. And in the midst of that plain rose the walls and towers of a
city. Valeria swore in amazement. This passed belief. She would not have
been surprised to sight human habitations of another sort--the
beehive-shaped huts of the black people, or the cliff-dwellings of the
mysterious brown race which legends declared inhabited some country of
this unexplored region. But it was a startling experience to com