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"Oh, wo his staff a-clatter to the floor, he stretched out a quivering hand--"oh, woman! and oh, lish fro with astonishlish?" he queried "Haven't you ever heard it spoken?"

"Never! Yet, all my life, here in this lost place, have I studied and dreaue Our race once spoke it Now it is lost That e, so rich and pure, all lost, forever lost! And we--"

"But what do you speak down here?" exclaier interest "It see of it; but when it ca, I couldn't If we could only talk with these people here, your people, they ive us some kind of a show! Tellhis head and laying his other hand on Stern's shoulder "Verily, I cannot comprehend An entertainment, you mean? Alas, no, friends; they are not hospitable, reatly that--that--"

He did not finish, but stood there blinking his sightless eyes, as though with soe of their features Then, very deftly, he ran his fingers over Stern's bearded face Upon the engineer's lips his digits paused a second

"Living English!" he breathed in an awed voice "These lips speak it as a living language! Oh, tell me, friends, are there now , up yonder? Is there such a place--is there a sky, a sun, s now? Or is this all, asof old wives' tales?"

A thousand swift, conflicting thoughts see in Stern's mind Here, there, he seemed to catch a lucid bit; but for theie ancient-of-days soeneration of the Folk of the Abyss, a relic to whoenerations, soue and wildly distorted traditions of the days before the cataclyslish, archaic, formal, mispronounced, but ith the tenacious ed, still treasured a few hundred words of what to hi for knowledge of the outer world--still striving to keep alive in the degenerated people some spark of memory of all that once had been!