"I may not see him," he returned evasively. Before Zetta could speak again, he vanished silently into the shadows. I fancied he made a leap upward; I did not see him come down. We started off. We were descending now down a gentle slope. The verdure grew thicker as we advanced. The perfume in the air turned aromatic, as though scented by a million spiced blossoms. Abruptly the moon came out for a moment, a small purple sun. The darkness lifted. We were in a jungle of vegetation. It arched over us--great leafy spires, interlocking to a network through which the moonlight straggled. There seemed few trees; it was all a network of stalks, and giant vines and great huge lacy leaves. Pods and flowers hung in clusters. Over our heads the foliage was solidly interwoven. I gazed up, and in the open moonlight up there, it seemed to me on top of this tangled vegetation, an artificial roadway--a street perhaps--was resting. There were moving shapes up there, as though people might be passing along a city street. "Here we are," father called back over his shoulder. He shook his lantern vigorously, and raised it over his head. "Here we are, '_Under Gardens_,' Hulda named it. Our home--yours too now, while we are here." He chuckled. "You might almost think you were back on earth, mightn't you?" [Illustration: "Here we are," father told us. "This is 'Under Gardens'--it is our home. You might almost think we were back on Earth, mightn't you?"] He had stopped to let us come up with him. We had been following a narrow, winding path, which like a tunnel, had been cut downward into the jungle. It opened now unexpectedly into a small clearing. Not that, rather should I call it a cave. The vegetation had obviously been hewn away to form a circular opening--a cleared ground space in an oval of a few hundred feet, walled in by the jungle, with the heavy network closing overhead fifty feet or more above us. The moonlight straggled down, to mingle its purple light with father's purple lantern. I saw here in this cave-like space, a little house built in earth fashion, a solidly square, two-storied structure of metallic blocks. Its walls gleamed smooth and burnished. Its windows had shutters sticking out at an angle. Behind one of the windows a dull interior light showed. There was a front veranda, with a railed balcony over it. Flowers were massed upon a flat roof. A few of their stalks had climbed and mingled with the vegetation arching above the house. On the ground there was a front garden with a metallic fence. Flowers growing; and low things in the ground which might have been vegetables. Altogether, it was a friendly-looking little dwelling place, neat, orderly, and for all its fantastic surroundings, of wholly earthly aspect. It was, I think, just for that reason, as surprising a sight as anything Xenephrene ever showed me. * * * * *