floor rolled ever on before us.

Whispering little playful breezes flew down the slopes
to gossip for a moment with the nodding flowers. Flocks
of rose finches raced chattering overhead to quarrel with
the tiny willow warblers, the chi-u-teb-tok, holding fief of
the drooping, graceful bowers bending down to the little
laughing stream that for the past hour had chuckled and
gurgled like a friendly water baby beside us.

I had proven, almost to my own satisfaction, that what
we had beheld had been a creation of the extraordinary
atmospheric attributes of these highlands, an atmosphere
so unique as to make almost anything of the kind possible.
But Drake was not convinced.

"I know," he said. "Of course I understand all that--
superimposed layers of warmer air that might have bent
the ray; vortices in the higher levels that might have
produced just that effect of the captured aurora. I admit
it's all possible. I'll even admit it's all probable, but damn
me, Doc, if I BELIEVE it! I had too clearly the feeling of a
CONSCIOUS force, a something that KNEW exactly what it
was doing--and had a REASON for it."

It was mid-afternoon.

The spell of the valley upon us, we had gone leisurely.
The western mount was close, the mouth of the gorge
through which we must pass, now plain before us. It did