save himself by clinging with his hands to the rocks, while the four-footed brute, not able so to check itself, fell into the churning water. Even as Torres reached a hand out to try to save it, the dog was carried under the rock.
Long Torres debated. That farther subterranean plunge of the river was dreadful to contemplate. Above was the open way to the day, and the life of him yearned towards the day as a bee or a flower toward the sun. Yet what had the hound encountered to drive it back in such precipitate retreat? As he pondered, he became aware that his hand was resting on a rounded surface. He picked the object up, and gazed into the eyeless, noseless features of a human skull. His frightened glances played over the carpet of bones, and, beyond all idoubt, he made out the ribs and spinal columns and thigh bones of what had once been men. This inclined him toward the water as the way out, but at sight of the foaming madness of it plunging through solid rock he recoiled.
Drawing the Queen's dagger, he crawled up between the web-guys with infinite carefulness, saw what the hound had seen, and came back in such vertigo of retreat that he, too, fell into the water, and, with but time to fill his lungs with air, was drawn into the opening and into darkness.
In the meanwhile, back at the lake dwelling of the Queen, events no less portentous were occurring with no less equal rapidity. Just returned from the ceremony at the Long House, the wedding party was in the action of seating itself for what might be called the wedding breakfast, when an arrow, penetrating an interstice in the bamboo wall, flashed between the Queen and Francis and transfixed the opposite wall, where its feathered shaft vibrated from the violence of its suddenly arrested flight. A rush to the windows looking out upon the narrow bridge, showed Henry and Francis the gravity of the situation. Even as they looked, they saw the Queen's spearman who guarded the approach to the bridge, midway across it in flight, falling into the water with the shaft of an arrow vibrating out of his back in similar fashion to the one in the wall of the room. Beyond the bridge, on the shore, headed by their priest and backed by their women and children, all the male Lost Souls were arching the air full with feathered bolts from their bows.
A spearman of the Queen tottered into the apartment, his limbs spreading vainly to support him, his eyes glazing, his lips beating a soundless message which his fading life could not utter, as he fell prone, his back bristling with arrow shafts like a porcupine. Henry sprang to the door that gave entrance from the bridge, and, with his automatic, swept it clear of the charging Lost Souls who— could advance only in single file and who fell as they advanced before his fire.
The siege of the frail house was brief. Though Francis, protected by Henry's automatic, destroyed the bridge, by no method could the besieged put out the blazing thatch of roof ignited in a score of places by the fire-arrows discharged under the Sun Priest's directions.
'There is but one way to escape,' the Queen panted, on the platform overlooking the whirl of waters, as she clasped one hand of Francis in hers and threatened to precipitate herself clingingly into his arms. 'It wins to the world.' She pointed to the sucking heart of the whirlpool. 'No one has ever returned from that. In my Mirror I have beheld them pass, dead always, and out to the wider world. Except for Torres, I have never seen the living go. Only the dead. And they never returned.. Nor has Torres returned.'
All eyes looked to all eyes at sight of the dreadfumess of the way.
'There is no other way?' Henry demanded, as he drew Leoncia close to him.
The Queen shook her head. About them already burning portions of the thatch were falling, while their ears were deafened by the blood-lust chantings of the Lost Souls on the lake-shore. The Queen disengaged her hand from Francis', with the evident intention of dashing into her sleeping room, then caught his hand and led him in. As he stood wonderingly beside her, she slammed down the lid on the chest of jewels and fastened it. Next, she kicked aside the floor matting and lifted a trap door that opened down to the water. At her indication, Francis dragged over the chest and dropped it through.
'Even the Sun Priest does not know that hiding place,' she whispered, ere she caught his hand again, and, running, led him back to the others on the platform.
'It is now time to depart from this place,' she announced.
'Hold me in your arms, good Francis, husband of mine, and lift me and leap with me,' she commanded. 'We will lead the way.'
And so they leapt. As the roof was crashing down in a wrath of fire and flying embers, Henry caught Leoncia to him, and sprang after into the whirl of waters wherein Francis and the Queen had already disappeared.
Like Torres, the four fugitives escaped injury against the rocks and were borne onward by the underground river to the daylight opening where the great spider-web guarded the way. Henry had an easier time of it, for Leoncia knew how to swim. But Francis' swimming prowess enabled him to keep the Queen up. She obeyed him implicitly, floating low in the water, nor clutched at his arms nor acted as a drag on him in any way. At the ledge, all four drew out of the water and rested. The two women devoted themselves to wringing out their hair, which had been flung adrift all about them by the swirling currents.
'It is not the first mountain I have been in the heart of with you two, 'Leoncia laughed to the Morgans, although more than for them was her speech intended for the Queen.
'It is the first time I have been in the heart of 9. mountain with my husband,' the Queen laughed back, and the barb of her dart sank deep into Leoncia.
'Seems as though your wife, Francis, and my wife-to-be, aren't going to hit it off too well together,' Henry said, with the sharpness of censure that man is wont to employ to conceal the embarrassment caused by his womankind.
And. as inevitable result of such male men's ways, all that Henry gained was a silence more awkward and more embarrassing. The two women almost enjoyed the situation. Francis cudgeled his brains vainly for some remark that wquld ameliorate matters; while Henry, in desperation, arose suddenly with the observation that he was going to 'explore a bit,' and invited, by his hand out to help her to her feet, the Queen to accompany him. Francis and Leoncia sat on for a moment in stubborn silence. He was the first to break it.
'For two cents I'd give you a thorough shaking, Leoncia.'
'And what have I done now?' she countered.
'As if you didn't know. You've been behaving abominably.' 'It is you who have behaved abominably,' she halfsobbed, in spite of her determination to betray no such feminine signs of weakness. 'Who asked you to marry her? You did not draw the short straw. Yet you must volunteer, must rush in where even angels would fear to tread? Did I ask you to? Almost did my heart stop beating when I heard you tell Henry you would marry her. I thought I was going to faint. You had not even consulted me; yet it was on my suggestion, in order to save you from her, that the straws were drawn yes, and I am not too little shameless to admit that it was because I wanted to save you for myself. Henry does not love me as you led me to believe you loved me. I never loved Henry as I loved you, as I do love you even now, God forgive me.'
Francis was swept beyond himself. He caught her and pressed her to him in a crushing embrace.
And on your very wedding day,' she gasped reproachfully in the midmost of his embrace.
His arm died away from about her.
'And this from you, Leoncia, at such a moment,' he murmured sadly.
And why not?' she flared. 'You loved me. You gave me to understand, beyond all chance of misunderstanding, that you loved me; yet here, to-day, you went out of your way, went eagerly and gladly, and married yourself to the first woman with a white skin who presented herself.'
'You are jealous,' he charged, and knew a heart-throb of joy as she nodded. 'And I grant you are jealous; but at the same time, exercising the woman's prerogative of lying, you are lying now. What I did, was not done eagerly nor gladly. I did it for your sake and my sake or for Henry's sake, rather. Thank God, I have a man's honor still left to me!'
'Man's honour does not always satisfy woman,' she replied.
'Would you prefer me dishonorable?' he was swift on the uptake.
'I am only a woman who loves,' she pleaded.
'You are a stinging, female wasp,' he raged, 'and you are not fair.'
'Is any woman fair when she loves?' she made the great confession and acknowledgment. 'Men may succeed in living in their heads of honor; but know, and as a humble woman I humbly state my womanhood, that woman lives only in her heart of love.'
'Perhaps you are right. Honor, like arithmetic, can be reasoned and calculated. Which leaves a woman no morality, but only…'
'Only moods,' Leoncia completed abjectly for him.
