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"The what?"

"The huge cleft which the story says once connected the upper world with this Abyss And--"

"Is it open now," cried Stern, leaning sharply forward

"Alas, no; but you hurrytime they lived the cave-life partly, and partly the upper life And they increased a great deal in the hundred years that followed the explosion But they never could go into the plains, for still the gas hung there, rising from a thousand wells--ten thousand, mayhap, all very deadly And so they knew not if the rest of the world lived or died"

"And then?" queried the engineer "Let's have it all in outline What happened?"

"This, reater cold came upon the world, and the life of the open became impossible There were now ten or twelve thousand alive; but they were losing their skill, their knowledge, everything Only a few , even For life was a terrible fight And they had to seek food now in the cave-lakes; that was all re

"After that, another fifty or a hundred years, careat explosion The ere closed to the outer world Nearly all died What happened even the tradition does not tell How many years the handful of people wandered I do not know Neither do I kno they caether reached this sea It was much smaller then The islands of the Lanskaarn, as we call thees have taken place Verily, all is different! Everything was lost--language and arts, and even the look of the Folk

"We becaotten save by a few Sometimes we increased, then came pestilences and faases, and nearly all died At one time only seven remained--"

"For all the world like the story of Pitcairn Island and the ineer "Yes, yes--go on!"

"There is little more to tell The tradition says there was once a place of records, where certain of the wisest men of our Folk placed all their lore to keep it; but even this place is lost Only one falish as a kind of inheritance and the single book ith that family--"

"But the Lanskaarn and the other peoples of the Abyss, where did they coerly

The patriarch shook his head