"Your hair is the color of the sun!" she said. "Your garb is Vasad, yet you speak the language of the true men." Her violet oddly slanting eyes opened yet wider. "Who are you?" "I am Noork," the man told her. "For many days have I dwelt among the wild Vasads of the jungle with their golden-skinned chief, Gurn, for my friend." The girl impulsively took a step nearer. "Gurn!" she cried. "Is he tall and strong? Has he a bracelet of golden discs linked together with human hair? Does he talk with his own shadow when he thinks?" "That is Gurn," admitted Noork shortly. "He is also an exile from the walled city of Grath. The city rulers call him a traitor. He has told me the reason. Perhaps you know it as well?" "Indeed I do," cried Sarna. "My brother said that we should no longer make slaves of the captured Zurans from the other valleys." Noork smiled. "I am glad he is your brother," he said simply. * * * * * The girl's eyes fell before his admiring gaze and warm blood flooded into her rounded neck and lovely cheeks. "Brown-skinned one!" she cried with a stamp of her shapely little sandalled foot. "I am displeased with the noises of your tongue. I will listen to it no more." But her eyes gave the provocative lie to her words. This brown-skinned giant with the sunlit hair was very attractive.... The girl was still talking much later, as they walked together along the game-trail. "When my captors were but one day's march from their foul city of Bis the warriors of the city of Konto, through whose fertile valley we had journeyed by night, fell upon the slavers. "And in the confusion of the attack five of us escaped. We returned toward the valley of Grath, but to avoid the intervening valley where our enemies, the men of Konto, lived, we swung close to the Lake of Uzdon. And the Misty Ones from the Temple of the Skull trailed us. I alone escaped." Noork lifted the short, broad-bladed sword that swung in its sheath at his belt and let it drop back into place with a satisfying whisper of flexible leather on steel. He looked toward the east where lay the mysterious long lake of the Misty Ones. "Some day," he said reflectively, "I am going to visit the island of the unseen evil beings who stole away your friends. Perhaps after I have taken you to your brother's hidden village, and from there to your city of Grath...." He smiled. The girl did not answer. His keen ears, now that he was no longer speaking, caught the scuffing of feet into the jungle behind him. He turned quickly to find the girl had vanished, and with an instinctive reflex of motion he flung himself to one side into the dense wall of the jungle. As it was the unseen club thudded down along his right arm, numbing it so he felt nothing for some time.