"'Any man may look lightly into heaven, to the highest star; but who dares require of the bowels of Earth their abysmal secrets?'" "That is my stepfather's handwriting," whispered Enid, her head close to Lanark's shoulder. He read on: "'The rewards of Good are unproven; but the revenges of Evil are great, and manifest on all sides. Fear will always vanquish love.'" He grinned slightly, harshly. Jager remembered having seen that grin in the old army days, before a battle. "I think we're being warned," Lanark said to his old sergeant. "It's a challenge, meant to frighten us. But challenges have always drawn me." "I can't believe," said Enid, "that fear will vanquish love." She blushed suddenly and rosily, as if embarrassed by her own words. "That is probably beside the point," she resumed. "What I began to say was that the sight of my stepfather's writing--why is it reversed like that?--the sight, anyway, has brought things back into my mind." "What things?" Jager demanded eagerly. "Come into the house, Miss Mandifer, and tell us." "Oh, not into the house," she demurred at once. "It's dark in there--damp and cold. Let's go out here, to the seat under the tree." She conducted them to the bench whither Lanark had accompanied her the day before. "Now," Jager prompted her, and she began: "I remember of hearing him, when I was a child, as he talked to his son Larue and they thought I did not listen or did not comprehend. He told of these very things, these views he has written. He said, as if teaching Larue, 'Fear is stronger than love; where love can but plead, fear can command.'" "A devil's doctrine!" grunted Jager, and Lanark nodded agreement. "He said more," went on Enid. "He spoke of 'Those Below,' and of how they 'rule by fear, and therefore are stronger than Those on High, who rule by weak love.'" "Blasphemy," commented Jager, in his beard. "Those statements fit what I remember of his talk," Lanark put in. "He spoke, just before we fought the guerrillas, of some great evil to come from flouting Those Below." "I remember," nodded Jager. "Go on, young woman." "Then there was the box." "The box?" repeated both men quickly. "Yes. It was a small case, of dark gray metal, or stone--or something. This, too, was when I was little. He offered it to Larue, and laughed when Larue could not open it." Jager and Lanark darted looks at each other. They were remembering such a box. "My stepfather then took it back," Enid related, "and said that it held his fate and fortune; that he would live and prosper until the secret writing within it should be taken forth and destroyed." "I remember where that box is," Lanark said breathlessly to Jager. "In the old oven, at----" "We could not open it, either," interrupted the preacher. "He spoke of that, too," Enid told them. "It would never open, he told Larue, save in the 'place of the Nameless One'--that must be where the house burned--and at midnight under a full moon."