floor.

For a full minute she lay there as if asleep. Then, as strength and courage returned, she dragged herself to the door and made one last attempt to drink in air from the crack beneath the door.

“I can’t die like a poisoned rat,” she told herself. “I am a soldier. I can’t die this way.” Only half conscious of what she was doing, she screamed:

“No! No! No!” at the top of her voice.

Shocked into sudden full consciousness, she listened. Did she hear footsteps? Encouraged, she screamed again:

“No! No! No!”

The door swung open and she rolled out on the floor.

Stunned by the sudden turn events had taken, she lay where she was for a full moment. After a struggle to bring back her drugged senses, she sat up to find herself staring at one of the strangest looking men she had ever seen. For a space of seconds she believed that she had not regained her full consciousness at all, but was in some strange dream world.

Then the man spoke, and she knew he was real. He was short and very fat. His hands and feet were very small. His finger nails were long and curved like the talons of an eagle. Dressed as he was in bright robes, he seemed like some huge bright-hued tropical bird.

“Who closed this door?” he demanded in a high-pitched voice. “Who is burning my incense? It is terrible, wasting a whole month’s supply in a single hour!”

Without waiting for a reply, he sprang to the leering apes, and tearing them apart by some trick known only to himself, spread powder and glowing sparks over the floor.

After that he danced away on his tiny feet to throw open a back door, and by some strange device to open a row of shutters beneath the eaves.

Dancing toward the girl he demanded again:

“Who did this? I was away but a moment. You or some other one did this!”

“Yes,” Gale agreed. She was standing now, and towered above him. “Someone did it, but not I. There was a man here when we came.”

“We!” he screamed. “Then there are others?”

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