for ages, within easy access to the cave
entrances. Her only difficulty would be in procuring food and for that
she must take the risk at least once in two days, for she was sure that
she could find fruits and tubers and perhaps small animals, birds, and
eggs near the foot of the cliff, the last two, possibly, in the caves
themselves. Thus might she live on here indefinitely. She felt now a
certain sense of security imparted doubtless by the impregnability of
her high-flung sanctuary that she knew to be safe from all the more
dangerous beasts, and this one from men, too, since it lay in the
abjured Kor-ul-gryf.

Now she determined to inspect the interior of her new home. The sun
still in the south, lighted the interior of the first apartment. It was
similar to those of her experience--the same beasts and men were
depicted in the same crude fashion in the carvings on the
walls--evidently there had been little progress in the race of Waz-don
during the generations that had come and departed since Kor-ul-gryf had
been abandoned by men. Of course Pan-at-lee thought no such thoughts,
for evolution and progress existed not for her, or her kind. Things
were as they had always been and would always be as they were.

That these strange creatures have existed thus for incalculable ages it
can scarce be doubted, so marked are the indications of antiquity about
their dwellings--deep furrows worn by naked feet in living rock; the
hollow in the jamb of a stone doorway where many arms have touched in
passing; the endless carvings that cover, ofttimes, the entire face of
a great cliff and all the walls and ceilings of every cave and each
carving wrought by a different hand, for each is the coat of arms, one
might say, of the adult male who traced it.

And so Pan-at-lee found this ancient cave homelike and familiar. There
was less litter within than she had found without and what there was
was mostly an accumulation of dust. Beside the doorway was the niche in
which wood and tinder were kept, but there remained nothing now other
than mere dust. She had however saved a little pile of twigs from the
debris on the porch. In a short time she had made a light by firing a
bundle of twigs and lighting others from this fire she explored some of
the inner rooms. Nor here did she find aught that was new or strange
nor any relic of the departed owners other than a few broken stone
dishes. She had been looking for something soft to sleep upon, b