ully out of deep sockets. My
two guides silently took their places among them.

And suddenly the thick fog began to lift. It was swept raggedly away on
the breath of a chill wind. The far dim reaches of the cavern were
revealed as the mist swiftly dissipated, and I stood silent in the grip
of a mighty fear, and, strangely, an equally potent, unaccountable
thrill of delight. A part of my mind seemed to ask, "What horror is
this?" And another part whispered, "You know this place!"

But I could never have seen it before. If I had realized what lay far
beneath the castle I could never have slept at night for the fear that
would have obsessed me. For, standing silent with conflicting tides of
horror and ecstasy racing through me, I saw the weird inhabitants of the
underground world.

Demons, monsters, unnamable things! Nightmare colossi strode bellowing
through the murk, and amorphous gray things like giant slugs walked
upright on stumpy legs. Creatures of shapeless soft pulp, beings with
flame-shot eyes scattered over their misshapen bodies like fabled Argus,
writhed and twisted there in the evil glow. Winged things that were not
bats swooped and fluttered in the tenebrous air, whispering
sibilantly--whispering in _human_ voices.

Far away at the bottom of the slope I could see the chill gleam of
water, a hidden, sunless sea. Shapes mercifully almost hidden by
distance and the semi-darkness sported and cried, troubling the surface
of the lake, the size of which I could only conjecture. And a flapping
thing whose leathery wings stretched like a tent above my head swooped
and hovered for a moment, staring with flaming eyes, and then darted off
and was lost in the gloom.

And all the while, as I shuddered with fear and loathing, within me was
this evil glee--this voice which whispered, "You know this place! You
belong here! Is it not good to be home?"

I glanced behind me. The great door had swung silently shut, and escape
was impossible. And then pride came to my aid. I was a Kralitz. And a
Kralitz would not acknowledge fear in the face of the devil himself!

* * * * *

I stepped forward and confronted the warders, who were still seated
regarding me intently from eyes in which a smoldering fire seemed to
burn. Fighting down an insane dread that I might find before me an array
of fleshless skeletons, I stepped to the head of the table, where there
was a sort of crude throne, and peered c