you think so?"

"I don't know. Just feel. He's there--alive or--" a half sob clutched
at her voice--"or dead. But he's there."

"There'll be some one with him if he's alive, most likely."

"Sure," said Tharon briefly.

All the afternoon they traveled, sometimes touching with outstretched
hands the faces on either side of them, again walking upward through
majestic halls, solemn and beautiful. Everything about them was
beautiful, the height, the sheer, straight walls, the myriad little
blue shadows of tiny projections on their faces. Night came so early
in the pits that long before they wished they were compelled to camp.
In a blind pocket, walled like a room and round as an apple, they
stopped, and Billy spread down the blanket he had taken from
Drumfire's back. This was their only preparation. They had nothing to
do, no fire to build, no water to bring.

Tharon, scarcely conscious of the many miles she had traveled since
the previous night, sat down upon the blanket, gathered her knees in
her arms and stared at the vague blue phantoms of cliffs through the
tall straight mouth that led into this sheltered pocket.

Outside the winds were drawing up the canyons. All day they had walked
in this wind. It drew constantly up and down the cuts, this way and
that, like contrary currents that met and fought each other, swung in
together, went a little way in peace, to again split and surge away
through other channels. The echoes were alive with every sound, both
of their own making and that of the wind's. A constant sighing droned
through the depths, a mournful, whispering sound that sent the shivers
down Tharon's spine, made her think sadly of all the tragedies she had
ever known.

Billy, lying full length beside her, his hands beneath his head,
looked up to the narrow blue spot of sky so far away, and thought his
own thoughts, and they were not wholly sad.

They fell to talking, softly, in low tones, as if in all the
mysterious solitude there might be one to hear, and it was mostly
speech of long ago--when Billy had first come into Lost Valley.

After a long and quiet hour the man insisted that she should
sleep--that after the hard day and in view of the coming hard morrow,
she needed rest.

"But I'm not tired, Billy," Tharon protested, "no more'n as if I'd
been ridin' all day after th' cattle."

But Billy shook his head and hollowed a little place in the soft slide
stuff at the Wall's foot. In this he spread the