"Bing!" interjected Ventnor, looking around for a moment.
"Bing--just like that. Slap dash against a prodigious
fall of rock. We couldn't get over it."

"So we cast about to find another road," went on Ruth.
"All we could strike were--just strikes."

"No fish on the end of 'em," said Ventnor. "God! But
I'm glad to see you, Walter Goodwin. Believe me, I am.
However--go on, Ruth."

"At the end of the second week," she said, "we knew we
were lost. We were deep in the heart of the range. All
around us was a forest of enormous, snow-topped peaks.
The gorges, the canyons, the valleys that we tried led us
east and west, north and south.

"It was a maze, and in it we seemed to be going ever
deeper. There was not the SLIGHTEST sign of human life. It
was as though no human beings except ourselves had
ever been there. Game was plentiful. We had no trouble
in getting food. And sooner or later, of course, we were
bound to find our way out. We didn't worry.

"It was five nights ago that we camped at the head of a
lovely little valley. There was a mound that stood up like
a tiny watch-tower, looking down it. The trees grew round
like tall sentinels.

"We built our fire in that mound; and after we had