and hurried breakfast. The
saddlebags were packed and strapped upon the pony. Within them were what
we could carry of souvenirs from Norhala's home--a suit of lacquered
armor, a pair of cloaks and sandals, the jeweled combs. Ruth and Drake
at the side of the pony, Ventnor and I leading, we set forth toward the
Pit.

"We'll probably have to come back, Walter," he said. "I don't believe
the place is passable."

I pointed--we were then just over the threshold of the elfin globe.
Where the veils had stretched between the perpendicular pillars of the
cliffs was now a wide and ragged-edged opening.

The roadway which had run so smoothly through the scarps was blocked
by a thousand foot barrier. Over it, beyond it, I could see through the
crystalline clarity of the air the opposing walls.

"We can climb it," Ventnor said. We passed on and reached the base
of the barrier. An avalanche had dropped there; the barricade was the
debris of the torn cliffs, their dust, their pebbles, their boulders. We
toiled up; we reached the crest; we looked down upon the valley.

When first we had seen it we had gazed upon a sea of radiance pierced
with lanced forests, swept with gigantic gonfalons of flame; we had seen
it emptied of its fiery mists--a vast slate covered with the chirography
of a mathematical god; we had seen it filled with the symboling of the
Metal Hordes and dominated by the colossal integrate hieroglyph of the
living City; we had seen it as a radiant lake over which brooded weird
suns; a lake of yellow flame froth upon which a sparkling hail fell,
within which reared islanded towers and a drowning mount running with
cataracts of sun fires; here we had watched a goddess woman, a being
half of earth, half of the unknown immured within a living tomb--a
dying tomb--of flaming mysteries; had seen a cross-shaped metal Satan, a
sullen flaming crystal Judas betray--itself.

Where we had peered into the unfathomable, had glimpsed the infinite,
had heard and had seen the inexplicable, now was--

Slag!

The amethystine ring from which had been streamed the circling veils was
cracked and blackened; like a seam of coal it had stretched around the
Pit--a crown of mourning. The veils were gone. The floor of the valley
was fissured and blackened; its patterns, its writings burned away. As
far as we could see stretched a sea of slag--coal black, vitrified and
dead.

Here and there black hillocks sprawled; huge pillars arose, bent a