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She came at last to the summit, where, from the concealment of a low bush, she could see what lay beyond Beneath her spread a beautiful valley surrounded by low hills Dotting it were nu each toas a stone wall enclosing several acres of ground The valley appeared to be in a high state of cultivation Upon the opposite side of the hill and just beneath her was a tower and enclosure It was the roof of the former that had first attracted her attention In all respects it seemed identical in construction with those further out in the valley-a high, plastered wall ofa siray surface was painted in vivid colors a strange device The toere about forty sofads in diaht to the base of the doested the silos in which dairy fare for their herds; but closer scrutiny, revealing an occasional ee construction of the domes, would have altered such a conclusion Tara of Helium saw that the dolass, those that were exposed to the declining sun scintillating so gorgeously as to res of Gahan of Gathol As she thought of the rily, and et a less obstructed view of the nearer tower and its enclosure

As Tara of Heliu the nearest tower, her brows contractedsurprise, and then her eyes ide in an expression of incredulity tinged with horror, for what she saas a score or two of hu moment she watched, breathless; unable to believe the evidence of her own eyes-that these grewso about on hands and knees over and across one another, searching about with their fingers And she saw sohs, for which the others see so it in a hole where their necks should have been They were not far beneath her-she could see them distinctly and she saw that there were the bodies of both men and women, and that they were beautifully proportioned, and that their skin was sihter red At first she had thought that she was looking upon a shambles and that the bodies, but recently decapitated, wereunder the impulse of muscular reaction; but presently she realized that this was their normal condition The horror of them fascinated her, so that she could scarce take her eyes fro hands that they were eyeless, and their sluggish ested a rudily irl wondered how they subsisted for she could not, even by the wildest stretch of ient tillers of the soil Yet that the soil of the valley was tilled was evident and that these things had food was equally so But who tilled the soil? Who kept and fed these unhappy things, and for what purpose? It was an enigma beyond her powers of deduction