branch.

It was necessary for him to proceed with great rapidity, if he would catch up with the messenger ant, so Myles broke into a dog trot. On and on he ran; up, into the rocky mountains.

At last he sat down exhausted on a large boulder, just as the silvery sky turned crimson in the west, and darkness crept up out of the east. It was quite evident that he had taken the wrong road at the fork, and also that he must now spend the night, half clad and alone amid the rocks of the mountains of this strange new continent.

V LOST AMID THE ROCKS

LOST AMID THE ROCKS

But although Myles Cabot was lost, he was free for the first time since his return to Poros.

So not disheartened he arose and proceeded along the trail, looking for food and a place to spend the night; and presently came upon a “green cow,” as he was wont to call the aphids which are kept both by Cupians and Formians for the honey-dew which they produce.

It made no objection to Cabot’s approach, nor to his manipulating the two horns which projected from its back, with the result that the tired man was presently regaling himself with a satisfying drafts of green “milk” from a leafy cup.

The bush, which furnished the leaf to fashion the cup, closely resembled the tartan bushes of Cupia, whose heart-shaped leaves are put to so many uses in that country. Myles Cabot accordingly stripped off a considerable portion of the foliage, and lay down in a bed of warm, thick green for the night.

The morning dawned silver bright. Myles drew another meal from the grazing aphid and then pressed on up the rocky defile. He did not dare return for fear of meeting ant-men; and besides, now that a night’s rest had to some extent tempered his chagrin at not catching up with the particular ant-man whom he had been pursuing, he could not be sure he had taken the wrong road after all. So on he went, up the rocky path.

Around noon the path petered out at the top of an eminence which gave Cabot an opportunity to survey the surrounding scenery. To the westward lay the city from which he had fled. What had become, he wondered, of the supporters of his friend Doggo and of Formis, the ant-queen, whose cause he had espoused? According to Emu, Doggo and Formis were both dead, or Cabot would never have deserted them.

Cabot turned his attention next 

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