faltered, recoiling from the child--"and it is, then, for my
murder that thus treacherously thou hast invited me forth? No, I cannot
believe it. I cannot think thee guilty of such a crime."

"It is no crime to slay those who threaten the good of the community; it
would be a crime to slay the smallest insect that cannot harm us."

"If you mean that I threaten the good of the community because your
sister honours me with the sort of preference which a child may feel for
a strange plaything, it is not necessary to kill me. Let me return to
the people I have left, and by the chasm through which I descended. With
a slight help from you I might do so now. You, by the aid of your wings,
could fasten to the rocky ledge within the chasm the cord that you
found, and have no doubt preserved. Do but that; assist me but to the
spot from which I alighted, and I vanish from your world for ever, and
as surely as if I were among the dead."

"The chasm through which you descended! Look round; we stand now on the
very place where it yawned. What see you? Only solid rock. The chasm was
closed, by the orders of Aph-Lin, as soon as communication between him
and yourself was established in your trance, and he learned from
your own lips the nature of the world from which you came. Do you not
remember when Zee bade me not question you as to yourself or your
race? On quitting you that day, Aph-Lin accosted me, and said, 'No path
between the stranger's home and ours should be left unclosed, or the
sorrow and evil of his home may descend to ours. Take with thee the
children of thy band, smite the sides of the cavern with your vril
staves till the fall of their fragments fills up every chink through
which a gleam of our lamps could force its way.'"

As the child spoke, I stared aghast at the blind rocks before me. Huge
and irregular, the granite masses, showing by charred discolouration
where they had been shattered, rose from footing to roof-top; not a
cranny!

"All hope, then, is gone," I murmured, sinking down on the craggy
wayside, "and I shall nevermore see the sun." I covered my face with my
hands, and prayed to Him whose presence I had so often forgotten when
the heavens had declared His handiwork. I felt His presence in the
depths of the nether earth, and amidst the world of the grave. I looked
up, taking comfort and courage from my prayers, and, gazing with a quiet
smile into the face of the child, said, "Now, if thou must slay me,
st