on solidity. The fear
of the walled-in earth chilled him and he could not venture. All the
men who had died, from Neegah the first of the Mandells, to Howgah
the last of the Hungry Folk, came and sat with him, but he chose the
terror of their company rather than face the horror which he felt to
lurk in the thick blackness. He had been sitting long when something
soft and cold fluttered lightly on his cheek, and he knew the first
winter's snow was falling. The dim dawn came, and after that the
bright day, when he heard a low guttural sobbing, which came and went
at intervals along the passage and which drew closer each time and
more distinct He slipped over the edge, dropped his feet to the first
ledge, and waited.

That which sobbed made slow progress, but at last, after many halts,
it reached him, and he was sure no Sunlander made the noise. So he
reached a hand inside, and where there should have been a head felt
the shoulders of a man uplifted on bent arms. The head he found later,
not erect, but hanging straight down so that the crown rested on the
floor of the passage.

"Is it you, Tyee?" the head said. "For it is I, Aab-Waak, who am
helpless and broken as a rough-flung spear. My head is in the dirt,
and I may not climb down unaided."

Tyee clambered in, dragged him up with his back against the wall, but
the head hung down on the chest and sobbed and wailed.

"Ai-oo-o, ai-oo-o!" it went "Oloof forgot, for Mesahchie likewise knew
the secret and showed the Sunlanders, else they would not have waited
at the end of the narrow way. Wherefore, I am a broken man, and
helpless--ai-oo-o, ai-oo-o!"

"And did they die, the cursed Sunlanders, at the end of the narrow
way?" Tyee demanded.

"How should I know they waited?" Aab-Waak gurgled. "For my brothers
had gone before, many of them, and there was no sound of struggle.
How should I know why there should be no sound of struggle? And ere
I knew, two hands were about my neck so that I could not cry out and
warn my brothers yet to come. And then there were two hands more on my
head, and two more on my feet. In this fashion the three Sunlanders
had me. And while the hands held my head in the one place, the hands
on my feet swung my body around, and as we wring the neck of a duck in
the marsh, so my week was wrung.

"But it was not given that I should die," he went on, a remnant of
pride yet glimmering. "I, only, am left. Oloof and the rest lie on
their backs in a row,