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of Iskander abode here, unconquered. Many times we have slaughtered the Afghan dogs who came against us.”
    Light came to Gordon, illuminating that misplaced familiarity. Iskander — Alexander the Great, who conquered this part of Asia and left colonies behind him. This boy’s profile was classic Grecian, such as Gordon had seen in sculptured marble, and the names he spoke were Grecian. Undoubtedly he was the descendant of some Macedonian soldier who had followed the Great Conqueror on his invasion of the East.
    To test the matter, he spoke to Bardylis in ancient Greek, one of the manylanguages, modern and obsolete, he had picked up in his varied career. The youth cried out with pleasure.
    “You speak our tongue!” he exclaimed, in the same language. “Not in a thousand years has a stranger come to us with our own speech on his lips. We converse with the Moslems in their own tongue, and they know nothing of ours. Surely you, too, are a Son of Iskander?”
    Gordon shook his head, wondering how he could explain his knowledge of the tongue to this youth who knew nothing of the world outside the hills. “My ancestors were neighbors of the people of Alexander,” he said at last. “So many of my people speak their language.”
    They were approaching the stone roofs which shone through the trees, and Gordon saw that Bardylis’ “village” was a substantial town, surrounded by a wall, and so plainly the work of long dead Grecian architects that he felt like a man who had wandered into a past and forgotten age.

    Outside the walls, men tilled the thin soil with primitive implements, and herded sheep and cattle. A few horses grazed along the bank of the stream which meandered through the valley. All the men, like Bardylis, were tall and fair-haired. They dropped their work and came running up, staring at the black-haired stranger in hostile surprize, until Bardylis reassured them.
    “It is the first time any but a captive or a trader has entered the valley in centuries,” said Bardylis to Gordon. “Say nothing till I bid you. I wish to surprize my people with your knowledge. Zeus, they will gape when they hear a stranger speak to them in their own tongue!”
    The gate in the wall hung open and unguarded, and Gordon noticed that the wall itself was in a poor state of repair. Bardylis remarked that the guard in the narrow pass at the end of the valley was sufficient protection, and that no hostile force had ever reached the cityitself. They passed through and walked along a broad paved street, in which yellow-haired people in tunics, men, women and children, went about their tasks much like the Greeks of two thousand years ago, among buildings which were duplicates of the structures of ancient Athens.
    A crowd quickly formed about them, but Bardylis, bursting with glee and importance, gave them no satisfaction. He went straight toward a large edifice near the center of the town and, mounting the broad steps, came into a large chamber where several men, more richly dressed than the common people, sat casting dice on a small table before them. The crowd swarmed in after them, and thronged the doorway eagerly. The chiefs ceased their dice game, and one, a giant with a commanding air, demanded: “What do you wish, Bardylis? Who is this stranger?”
    “A friend of Attalus, oh Ptolemy, king of the valley of Iskander,” answered Bardylis. “He speaks the tongue of Iskander!”
    “What tale is this?” harshly demanded the giant.
    “Let them hear, brother!” Bardylis directed triumphantly.
    “I come in peace,” said Gordon briefly, in archaic Greek. “I am called El Borak, but I am no Moslem.”
    A murmur of surprise went up from the throng, and Ptolemy fingered his chin and scowled suspiciously. He was a magnificently built man, clean shaven like all his tribesmen, and handsome, but his visage was moody.
    He listened impatiently while Bardylis related the circumstances of his meeting with Gordon, and when he told of the