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"Allan!"

"Well?"

"Suppose you never went again? With the populationhave, and the natural increase, wouldn't civilization reestablish itself in ti it would take! Every additional person imported puts us ahead tre all the Folk, all the Lanskaarn, and those other mysterious yellow-haired people they talk about from beyond the Great Vortex But I can do my share, anyhow Our boy here may have to complete the process It may take a lifetime to accomplish the rescue, but it ain?"

"I aly

"And leave us? Leave your boy? Leave me?"

"Only to return soon, darling! Very soon!"

"But after this one trip, will you proo in your place?"

"I'll see, dearest!"

"No, no! Not that! Promise!"

She had drawn his head down, and now her face close to his, was treerness

"Promise! Promise me, Allan! You must!"

Suddenly moved by her entreaty, he yielded

"I promise, Beta!" he exclaimed "Gad, I didn't know you were so deadly afraid of ht have been arranging otherwise already But I certainly will change --that'll be the last tih of relief unspeakable and kept silence But in her eyes he saw the shine of sudden tears

Allan had been gone more than four days and a half before Beatrice allowed herself to realize or to acknowledge the sick terror that for so in her soul

His usual time of return had hitherto been just a little over three days Sometimes, with favorable winds to the brink of the Abyss, and unusually strong rising currents of vapors from the sunken sea--from the Vortex, perhaps?--he had been able to make the round trip in sixty hours

But now over a hundred and eight hours had lagged by since Beatrice, carrying the boy, had accoar in the palisaded clearing

How light-hearted, confident, strong he had been, filled with great dreaht of peril, accident, or possible failure had clouded his iven to the child and to herself, his careful inspection of the orous orders, and the supreone whirring up the sky till distance far to the northard had sed him