How small and frail and inadequate she looked to be pitting herself against this fearsome creature!--and how magnificent! She was risking her life to save mine, and yet she did not love me. Still, it was not incredible--there are noble qualities far more unselfish than love. Loyalty is of these. But I could not permit her to sacrifice her life for loyalty. "Run, Duare!" I cried. "You can't save me--I am done for. Run while you can, or it will kill us both." She paid no attention to me, but thrust again. This time the spear tore into the many-faceted eye. With a shrill whistle of pain, the reptile turned upon Duare and sought to strike her with its gleaming horns; but she stood her ground and, thrusting again, drove the weapon between the distended jaws, drove it deep and far into the pink flesh of that repulsive maw. The spear point must have pierced the tongue, for it suddenly went limp; and I rolled from its encircling grasp to the ground. Instantly I was on my feet again, and seizing Duare's arm dragged her to one side as the vere charged blindly. It brushed past us, whistling and screaming, and then turned, but in the wrong direction. It was then that I realized that the creature had been totally blinded by the wound in its eye. Taking a perilous risk, I threw an arm about Duare and slid over the edge of the ledge upon which the brute had encountered us, for to have remained even an instant where we were would have meant being maimed or hurled to our doom by the viciously lashing tail of the frenzied lizard. Fortune favored us, and we came safely to rest upon another ledge at a slightly lower level. Above us we could hear the whistling scream of the vere and the thudding of his tail against the rocky escarpment. * * * * * Fearing that the creature might descend upon us, we hurried on, taking even greater risks than we had before; nor did we stop until we had reached comparatively level ground near the foot of the escarpment. Then we sat down to rest. We were both panting from our exertions. "You were wonderful," I said to Duare. "You risked your life to save mine." "Perhaps I was just afraid to be left alone," she said with some embarrassment. "I may have been entirely selfish." "I don't believe that," I remonstrated. The truth was that I didn't want to believe it. Another implication was far sweeter to me. "Anyhow," remarked Duare, "we found out what made the trail up the escarpment." "And that our beautiful valley may not be as secure as it looks," I added. "But the creature was going out of the valley up into the forest," she argued. "That is probably where it lived." "However, we had best be on our guard constantly." "And now you have no spear; and that is a real loss, for it is because of the spear that you are alive."