"So that's what you call 'em," the Goat Girl glanced curiously up at the silver icicles hanging in jagged points from the ceiling. "We have caves on Mt. Mern, but nothing like this." She looked apprehensively round the silent cavern, from which a perfect honeycomb of passageways branched off in all directions. "A fine place to get lost, I'd call it," she shivered, moving as close as she could to her companion. "What makes this lavender light? I see no lamps." "Jewels!" confided the Ox in a hushed voice. "See, there are hundreds of amethysts embedded in those rocks, each glowing like--" "An eye!" finished Handy nervously. "And all watching us, I dare say. My--y, do you suppose anyone lives here? But they must--" Unwinding her arms, Handy suddenly began snapping all thirty-five of her fingers. "Nox, Nox!" she cried excitedly. "I've just thought of something!" "Can't you think without shouting?" asked the Ox, flashing his eyes suspiciously from left to right. "No," said Handy triumphantly, "for this is something to shout about. Look, old Toggins, if this is a silver cave, why wouldn't a Silver Mountain be on top? All we have to do is open that door and start climbing again." "As I remember there was a sheer precipice back of the waterfall, how could we climb that? No, no! The best thing for us to do is to travel down one of the passageways and hope it will bring us out on the side of the mountain itself." "Yes, but which one?" demanded the Goat Girl. "There are about a hundred it seems to me." "Let's try that first one to the right," proposed the Ox judiciously. Their voices echoed and reverberated back and forth so uncannily in the big hollow cavern that almost without realizing it they began to talk in whispers and tread as softly as thieves in the night. Half-way to their destination they stopped, rigid with horror and consternation. Thumping footsteps were coming toward them from the labyrinth on the left. "Someone does live here, after all," said the Goat Girl. "Someone who weighs a ton. Hark to that!" "Watch yourself!" warned Nox, planting all four feet and making ready to charge if the cave dweller proved unfriendly. "Oh, my aunt--a GIANT!" With a shrill scream Handy flung all her arms round Nox's neck and buried her face in his shoulder. Poor Nox, nearly strangled by the Goat Girl's embrace could neither move nor speak and could scarcely breathe. With rolling eyes and quaking legs he watched the monster approach. The Giant's body, almost ten times the size of a grizzly bear, was encased in a tight purple uniform with bells instead of buttons that jingled whenever he moved. He wore a huge silver helmet, and his neck, almost a foot long, kept darting up and down as he shot his head in this direction and that.