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empty, still Garn did not take for granted that it lacked possible dangers. In addition those patrolling the heights were also named hunters and anything they could add to the pot was welcome.
    Quaine and his two men had stayed with us for ten days and then had gone, heading back westward in a general sweep into the unknown. Even as I played sentry on the dale ridges, so were they to patrol the whole of the western borders, they and their brothers, sentinels and guards for all the new settled dales. One of their duties was to seek out and map for us any remains of those vanished beings we had begun to call the Old Ones, they who had left this land before our coming.
    One reminder of them was placed above this very valley. Though it was unimpressive—according to Quaine— compared to those seen elsewhere, still it was a place each patrol warrior watched and made himself familiar with— as I was about to do.
    I went in mail, helmed, carried my crossbow as well as my sword, almost as if I were indeed prepared to meet attack, though certainly we could well have come into a deserted world for all we had seen. Now I jumped a crevice in the rocks and turned westward to begin the prowling along what we all accepted as the southern border of our new holding. So few were our party that Garn could only detach two fighting men at a time for this duty and we were expected to provide him with a full report upon our return.
    There was animal life to be found here. The wild creatures were not too different, save perhaps in color or size, from those I had hunted all my life. A species of deer, very fleet of foot, had used the dale for pasturage until our coming; now fled and seldom seen. However, there was also a creature which lived in the upper rocks, nearly as large as a new-thrown foal, but heavy of body. It had wicked claws and fangs and a temper to match so that one was wary in the hunt, but it was excellent eating.
    Always there were birds, some brilliant of wing, bright flashes against the sky. Another species were black and somehow unpleasant to look at. Those roosted in flocks upon the trees, screeching in rage at our axemen. When they took to the sky, they winged westward as if they sped to report the devastation we wrought in what had been their stronghold. I saw them rise now and wheel once over the forest—then speed away just above the height of the ridge.
    I kept close watch on what might come among these rocks. Roff had reported from his tour of duty yesterday that he had discovered odd tracks, deep printed in one of the pockets of earth, as if that which had made them had come to the very edge of the ridge and perhaps spied upon us. Save that the tracks were those of a large padded paw, as wide as his own hand. It might well be that he had found a trace of some native animal which was more dangerous—a hunter who would come hunting us.
    Thus I had shed my boots before the climb, putting on rather the softer and almost shapeless foot coverings which hunters used, through which my feet could feel the surface of the rock as I went, making as little noise as possible. The air was fresh and clean, and I believed that it did carry in it the faint scent of growing things, sometimes even a trace of what might have come from wind-stirred branches of blooming trees or bushes.
    That there were such here I discovered shortly, for there was a dip in the westernmost part of the ridge, and, advancing with caution to the rim of that, I looked down into a cup of land which held our own trace of the Old Ones. Trees hardly taller than my own head, but old, judging by the gnarled trunks and crooked branches, were set evenly spaced about a square of pavement.
    Those trees were in full blossom, their flowers being of a creamy pink-white, large and nearly flat, the tip of each wide petal rimmed with a darker pink. Many of those petals, already wind loosened, had shifted down to lie upon the stretch of stone pavement. Though the petals lay