gs!"

She seemed speaking of some nightmare vision as she added haltingly,
"There is a fleet of many ships, and Torg is in command. He has
thousands of men, and he goes forth to conquer your Earth. He goes
there to rule." She had to struggle to bring the words to her lips
now. "And--he takes me--with--him!"

"No--no!" the flyer protested, and he struggled insanely to free his
hands from the wires that cut the deeper into his flesh. The voice of
Althora, clear and strong now, brought him back.

"I shall never go, Tommy; never! The gift of eternal life is mine, but
it is mine to keep only if I will. But, for you and your friend--" She
tried to raise her hands to her trembling lips.

"Yes," said Lieutenant McGuire quietly, "for us--?"

But there were some things the soft lips of Althora refused to say.
Again she tried vainly to raise her hands, then turned her white,
stricken face that a loved one might not see the tears that were
mingling with the blood-stains on her cheeks, nor read in her eyes the
horror they beheld.

But she found one crumb of comfort for the two doomed men.

"You will live till the sailing of the ships, Tommy," she choked, "and
then--we will go together, Tommy--you and I."

Her head was bowed and her shoulders shaking, but she raised her head
proudly erect as she was seized by a guard whose blood-red hands
forced her from the room.

And the dry, straining eyes of Lieutenant McGuire, that watched her
going, saw the passing to an unknown fate of all he held dear, and the
end of his unspoken dreams.

He scarcely felt the grip of the hands that seized him, nor knew when
he and Sykes were carried from the room where Torg, the Emperor, held
his savage court. The stone walls of the room where they were thrown
could not hold his eyes; they looked through and beyond to see only
the white and piteous face of a girl whose lips were whispering: "We
will go together, Tommy--you and I."

(_Concluded in the next issue_)

MYSTERIOUS CARLSBAD CAVERN

The largest cavern ever discovered, at Carlsbad Cavern, N. M., is soon
going to be explored.

Carlsbad Cavern is so large that that three sky-scrapers a half-mile
apart could be built in the largest of its innumerable "rooms,"
according to Mr. Nicholson, who was there once before, about a year
ago. Only 22 miles of the cavern's apparently limitless tunnels have
been explored, revealing such natural beauties that President Coolidge
established it