ed body was outlined in living light, glowed and throbbed
with light--light filled her like a vessel, she bathed in it. She thrust
arms through the streaming, flaming locks; held them out from her,
prisoned. She swayed slowly, rhythmically; like a faint, golden chiming
came the echo of her song.

Abruptly around her, half circling her on the black spur, gleamed
myriads of gem fires. Flares and flames of pale emerald, steady glowing
of flame rubies, glints and lambencies of deepest sapphire, of wan
sapphire, flickering opalescences, irised glitterings. A moment they
gleamed. Then from them came bolt upon bolt of lightning--lightning that
darted upon the lovely shape swaying there; lightnings that fell upon
her, broke and dashed, cascading, from her radiant body.

The lightnings bathed her--she bathed in them.

The skies were covered by a swift mist. The aurora was veiled.

The valley filled with a palely shimmering radiance which dropped like
veils upon it, hiding all within it. Hiding within fold upon luminous
fold--Norhala!

CHAPTER VII. THE SHAPES IN THE MIST

Mutely we faced each other, white and wan in the ghostly light.

The valley was very still; as silent as though sound had been withdrawn
from it. The shimmering radiance suffusing it had thickened perceptibly;
hovered over the valley floor faintly sparkling mists; hid it.

Like a shroud was that silence. Beneath it my mind struggled, its
unease, its forebodings growing ever stronger. Silently we repacked the
saddlebags; girthed the pony; silently we waited for Norhala's return.

Idly I had noted that the place on which we stood must be raised
above the level of the vale. Up toward us the gathering mists had been
steadily rising; still was their wavering crest a half score feet below
us.

Abruptly out of their dim nebulosity a faintly phosphorescent square
broke. It lifted, slowly; then swept, a dully lustrous six-foot cube,
up the slope and came to rest almost at our feet. It dwelt there;
contemplated us from its myriads of deep-set, sparkling striations.

In its wake swam, one by one, six others--their tops raising from
the vapors like the first, watchfully; like shimmering backs of
sea monsters; like turrets of fantastic angled submarines from
phosphorescent seas. One by one they skimmed swiftly over the ledge; and
one by one they nestled, edge to edge and alternately, against the cube
which had gone before.

In a crescent, they stretched b