st.
He snapped on the light, and then he stood gaping stupidly at the rock
walls in disbelief.

There were carvings, deep cut reliefs of utter beauty, twining vine
leaves, little figures half-human peeping from the leaves, lovely female
bodies as the flowers, incredibly lovely female heads in clusters as the
fruit.

"I've come to the Halls of Bacchus himself! Sure, I must be dead
already. No wonder I can't manage to die! But if that ain't the vine
itself, I've never been drunk!" Pete was half delirious, half in the
darkness of utter despair. But his Irish heart whispered to him, "Where
there's the vine there's wine," and he tottered off weakly into the dark
in search of it.

Somewhere afar off he heard a faint mysterious laugh, strangely
feminine, strangely friendly. He stopped, for ahead of him was
approaching a strange faint light. Closer it came, stalking toward him
fearfully, and to anyone else it would have seemed like an animated
clothing store dummy without the clothes. But the figure was feminine,
and it bore on its shoulder a tall oval vase-like vessel.

Pete straightened, and awe swept over him. In a low voice he heard
himself quoting--

"_Came toward me through the dusk an angel-shape,
Bearing on her shoulder a vessel ...
And bid me taste of it. 'Twas the grape!_"

McCarthy's tongue twisted strangely in his mouth with a desirous life of
its own. The glowing angel-shape bent, and held the vessel to his lips,
and he drank long and deep. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand,
and looked into the angel's glowing eyes.

As he looked the shape changed, subtly, adapting itself to his approval
like a dream might, and McCarthy whispered in an awed voice:

"Sure, lady, it is the grape right enough! Now tell me, are you the same
angel who gave drink to Omar? Or was she your sister, maybe?"

The glowing shape, growing second by second more sweetly curved to his
eye, unsmilingly replaced the vessel on her shoulder. Her voice was a
distant melody though her face was right before his eyes:

"I am but a messenger, dear welcome stranger. I bid you consider these
ancient halls your home. When you are well and strong, there will be
many things to talk of, for I have been long alone. Mine eyes are glad
with the sight of you."

McCarthy touched the naked angel's shoulder, and was surprised to find
it hard as steel. The glowing being did not seem surprised, and her arm
went about his shoulders, supp