.

Great trees shadowed it, unfamiliar trees among whose glossy leaves
blossomed in wreaths flowers pink and white as apple-blossoms.
From their graceful branches strange fruits, golden and scarlet and
pear-shaped, hung pendulous.

It was an elfin palace; a goblin dwelling; such a bower as some
mirthful, beauty-loving Jinn King of Jewels might have built from
enchanted hoards for some well-beloved daughter of earth.

All of fifty feet in height was the blue globe, and up to a wide and
ovaled entrance ran a broad and shining roadway. Along this the cubes
swept and stopped.

"My house," murmured Norhala.

The attraction that had held us to the surface of the blocks relaxed,
angled through changed and assisting lines of force; the hosts of
minute eyes sparkling quizzically, interestedly, at us, we gently slid
Ventnor's body; lifted down the pony.

"Enter," sighed Norhala, and waved a welcoming hand.

"Tell her to wait a minute," ordered Drake.

He slipped the bandage from off the pony's head, threw off the
saddlebags, and led it to the side of the roadway where thick, lush
grass was growing, spangled with flowerets. There he hobbled it and
rejoined us. Together we picked up Ventnor and passed slowly through the
portal.

We stood in a shadowed chamber. The light that filled it was
translucent, and oddly enough with little of the bluish quality I had
expected. Crystalline it was; the shadows crystalline, too, rigid--like
the facets of great crystals. And as my eyes accustomed themselves I saw
that what I had thought shadows actually were none.

They were slices of semitransparent stone like pale moonstones,
springing from the curving walls and the high dome, and bisecting and
intersecting the chamber. They were pierced with oval doorways over
which fell glimmering metallic curtains--silk of silver and gold.

I glimpsed a pile of this silken stuff near by, and as we laid our
burden upon it Ruth caught my arm with a little frightened cry.

Through a curtained oval sidled a figure.

Black and tall, its long and gnarled arms swung apelike; its shoulders
were distorted, one so much longer than the other that the hand upon
that side hung far below the knee.

It walked with a curious, crablike motion. Upon its face were stamped
countless wrinkles and its blackness seemed less that of pigmentation
than the weathering of unbelievable years, the very stain of
ancientness. And about neither face nor figure was there a