ment
that the document is lost with your action in sending it to them by a
special messenger. They wish to know if you have so soon forgotten the
truth or if you are merely ignoring it."

"I sent them no document," I cried. "Ask them what they mean."

"They say," he went on after conversing with the Mahar for a moment,
"that just before your return to Phutra, Hooja the Sly One came,
bringing the great secret with him. He said that you had sent him
ahead with it, asking him to deliver it and return to Sari where you
would await him, bringing the girl with him."

"Dian?" I gasped. "The Mahars have given over Dian into the keeping of
Hooja."

"Surely," he replied. "What of it? She is only a gilak," as you or I
would say, "She is only a cow."

CHAPTER VI

A PENDENT WORLD

The Mahars set me free as they had promised, but with strict
injunctions never to approach Phutra or any other Mahar city. They
also made it perfectly plain that they considered me a dangerous
creature, and that having wiped the slate clean in so far as they were
under obligations to me, they now considered me fair prey. Should I
again fall into their hands, they intimated it would go ill with me.

They would not tell me in which direction Hooja had set forth with
Dian, so I departed from Phutra, filled with bitterness against the
Mahars, and rage toward the Sly One who had once again robbed me of my
greatest treasure.

At first I was minded to go directly back to Anoroc; but upon second
thought turned my face toward Sari, as I felt that somewhere in that
direction Hooja would travel, his own country lying in that general
direction.

Of my journey to Sari it is only necessary to say that it was fraught
with the usual excitement and adventure, incident to all travel across
the face of savage Pellucidar. The dangers, however, were greatly
reduced through the medium of my armament. I often wondered how it had
happened that I had ever survived the first ten years of my life within
the inner world, when, naked and primitively armed, I had traversed
great areas of her beast-ridden surface.

With the aid of my map, which I had kept with great care during my
march with the Sagoths in search of the great secret, I arrived at Sari
at last. As I topped the lofty plateau in whose rocky cliffs the
principal tribe of Sarians find their cave-homes, a great hue and cry
arose from those who first discovered me.

Like wasps from their nests th