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Gahan, watching through the aperture between the hangings, saw the frantic flight of their pursuers A grim smile rested upon his lips as he viewed the mad scraht with one another to be first froone he turned back toward Tara, the smile still upon his lips; but the smile died the instant that he turned, for he saw that Tara had disappeared

"Tara!" he called in a loud voice, for he knew that there was no danger that their pursuers would return; but there was no response, unless it was a faint sound as of cackling laughter froings finding several doors, one of which was ajar Through this he entered the adjoining chahtedThuria taking her h the heavens Here he found the dust upon the floor disturbed, and the imprint of sandals They had come this way-Tara and whatever the creature was that had stolen her

But what could it have been? Gahan, a ence, held few if any superstitions In co, more or less inherently, to a certain exalted forends of the virtues and heroic deeds of his forebears that he deified rather than theible evidence of their existence after death; he did not believe that they had the power either for good or for evil other than the effect that their exaenerations; he did not believe therefore in the materialization of dead spirits If there was a life hereafter he knew nothing of it, for he knew that science had demonstrated the existence of soly supernatural phenoions and superstitions Yet he was at a loss to knohat power ht have removed Tara so suddenly and mysteriously from his side in a chamber that had not known the presence of man for five thousand years

In the darkness he could not see whether there were the imprints of other sandals than Tara's-only that the dust was disturbed-and when it led hiether A perfect labyrinth of passages and aparth the deserted quarters of O-Mai Here was an ancient bath-doubtless that of the jeddak hih a room in which a meal had been laid upon a table five thousand years before-the untasted breakfast of O-Mai, perhaps There passed before his eyes in the brief moments that he traversed the chambers, a wealth of ornaments and jewels and precious metals that surprised even the Jed of Gathol whose harness was of diamonds and platinum and whose riches were the envy of a world But at last his search of O-Mai's chambers ended in a s to a spiral runway leading straight down into Stygian darkness The dust at the entrance of the closet had been freshly disturbed, and as this was the only possible indication that Gahan had of the direction taken by the abductor of Tara it seemed as well to follow on as to search elsewhere So, without hesitation, he descended into the utter darkness below Feeling with a foot before taking a forward step his descent was necessarily slow, but Gahan was a Barsooht await the unwary in such dark, forbidden portions of a jeddak's palace