* * * * *

And then he saw comprehension begin to dawn at last.

He also saw two of the caciques glide from the wooden line, and slink
toward him past the unconscious Duca, stealthily.

As Naida suddenly cried out to her companions, pushed at two of them,
and then darted like rainbow nymph toward the silent and forbidding
upward spiral of steps, Kirby faced the gliding caciques.

One he clutched with viselike hands, and lifted him. As the other
shrieked and sprang, he was mowed down by the hurtling body of his
fellow priest which Kirby flung forward mightily.

The rest of the caciques were howling. While Naida waited beside the
tower door, the other girls flashed up the steps. The Duca still lay
where he had fallen, a thread of blood oozing from his mouth. Kirby,
after his last look over all, solemnly stooped and gathered in his arms
the limp, radiant little body of the girl who had given her life that
her friends might be left with a leader.

A moment later, he was standing on the steps. Naida, unopposed by the
still stupefied caciques, swung shut the tower door and shot a double
bolt.

"Naida--" Kirby whispered as he held Elana closer to him, "oh, I am so
sorry that we could have won only at such a price."

As Naida stooped to kiss the pale little forehead with its halo of
golden hair, sobs came. But then she raised her eyes, and they were, for
Kirby, alight with the message that she could and would accept Elana's
sacrifice, because she would gladly have made it herself.

"We will not forget," she whispered. "Carry her tenderly, and come."

For better, for worse, the Duca's tower was theirs.

CHAPTER VI

At the end of an hour, Kirby was taking a turn of guard duty at the foot
of the steps, while the others remained with Elana in a chamber above.
To Kirby, with things thus far along, it seemed that the seizure of the
tower had proved a shrewd stroke.

It seemed that the tower was to the Duca what hair was to Sampson. From
Naida had come the information that the Duca lived hidden within the
great shaft of obsidion, and appeared but seldom even before his
caciques. Apparently a large part of his hold upon his subjects was
maintained by the mystery with which he kept himself surrounded. And now
his retreat was lost to him! Such had been the moral effect of the loss
upon both Duca and caciques, that his whole first hour had gone by
without their doing anything.

Kirby, stan