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"We'll have to wait until another spring?" asked she

"Looks that way," he assented, putting a few final touches to the calendar "So you see it's up to us to hurry--and certainly nothing more inopportune than this devilish rain could possibly have happened! Haste, haste! We must make haste!"

"That's so!" exclaimed Beatrice "Every day's precious, now We--"

"My children," hurriedly interrupted the patriarch, "I never yet have shown you reatest treasure The book!

"You have told s, of sun and moon and stars, which arepeople; of continents and seas, ines , tall houses; of words thrown along reat nations and wars, of a hundred wondrous matters that verily have passed away even from the remotest memories of us in the Abyss!

"But of our history I have told you little; nor have you seen the book! Yet you must see it, for it alone reh my folk e if it be true; you shall see what has kept the English speech alive in me, kept memories of the upper world alive Only the book, the book!"

His voice seeitated As he spoke he raised his hands toward the on the stone bench in the hut, while outside the rain still thundered louder than the droning roar of the great flame Stern, his curiosity suddenly aroused, looked at the old man with keen interest

"The book?" he queried "What book? What's the name of it? What date? What--rote it, and--"

"Patience, friends!"

"You e? A--"

"A book, verily, from the other days! But first, before I show you, let me tell you the old tradition that was handed down to h centuries--I know not how many"

"You mean the story of this Lost Folk in the Abyss?"

"Verily! You have told , of the ruined world and all your struggles and your fall down into this cursed pit Listen now to mine!"