She heard him and his comrade walking away over dried leaves; their steps receded; a dry stick cracked distantly; then silence stealthily invaded the place like a cautious living thing, creeping unseen through the golden twilight of the woods. Seated in her blanket, she drank the coffee; ate a little; then lay down again in the early sun, feeling the warmth of the heap of whitening coals at her feet, also. For an hour she dozed awake, drowsily opening her eyes now and then to look across the glade at the pool over which a single dragon-fly glittered on guard. Finally she rose resolutely, grasped a bit of soap, and went down to the edge of the pool. Tressa was in flannel shirt and knickers when her husband and Selden hailed the camp and presently appeared walking slowly toward the dead fire. Their grave faces checked her smile of greeting; her husband came up and laid one hand on her arm, looking at her out of thoughtful, preoccupied eyes. “What is the Tchordagh?” he said in a low voice. The girl’s quiet face went white. “The—the Tchordagh!” she stammered. “Yes, dear. What is it?” “I don’t—don’t know where you heard that term,” she whispered. “The Tchordagh is the—the power of Erlik. It is a term.... In it is comprehended all the evil, all the cunning, all the perverted spiritual intelligence of Evil,—its sinister might,—its menace. It is an Alouäd-Yezidee term, and it is written in brass in Eighur characters on the Eight Towers, and on the Rampart of Gog and Magog;—nowhere else in the world!” “It is written on a pine tree a few paces from this camp,” said Cleves absently. Selden said: “It has not been there more than an hour or two, Mrs. Cleves. A square of bark was cut out and on the white surface of the wood this word is written in English.” “Can you tell us what it signifies?” asked Cleves, quietly. Tressa’s studied effort at self-control was apparent to both men. She said: “When that word is written, then it is a death struggle between all the powers of Darkness and those who have read the written letters of that word.... For it is written in The Iron Book that no one but the Assassin of Khorassan—excepting the Eight Sheiks—shall read that written word and live to boast of having read it.” “Let us sit here and talk it over,” said Selden soberly. And when Tressa was seated on a fallen log, and Cleves settled down cross-legged at her feet, Selden spoke again, very soberly: “On the edges of these woods, to the northwest, lies a sea of briers, close growing, interwoven and matted, strong and murderous as barbed wire. “Miles out in this almost impenetrable region lies a patch of trees called Fool’s Acre. “At Wells I heard that the only man who had ever managed to reach Fool’s Acre was a trapper, and that he was still living. “I found him at Rainbow Lake—a very old man, who had a fairly clear recollection of Fool’s Acre and his exhausting journey there.