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run the sharp blade into that faithful body.
    Down into the
chamber she dragged me, and across it to the side opposite that at
which we had entered. Here was another doorway leading into a
corridor which ran directly down a steep incline. Without a
moment's hesitation Woolan jerked me along this rocky
passage.
    Presently she
stopped and released me, standing between me and the way we had
come, looking up into my face as though to ask if I would now
follow her voluntarily or if she must still resort to
force.
    Looking ruefully
at the marks of her great teeth upon my bare arm I decided to do as
she seemed to wish me to do. After all, her strange instinct might
be more dependable than my faulty human judgment.
    And well it was
that I had been forced to follow her. But a short distance from the
circular chamber we came suddenly into a brilliantly lighted
labyrinth of crystal glass partitioned passages.
    At first I
thought it was one vast, unbroken chamber, so clear and transparent
were the walls of the winding corridors, but after I had nearly
brained myself a couple of times by attempting to pass through
solid vitreous walls I went more carefully.
    We had proceeded
but a few yards along the corridor that had given us entrance to
this strange maze when Woolan gave mouth to a most frightful roar,
at the same time dashing against the clear partition at our
left.
    The resounding
echoes of that fearsome cry were still reverberating through the
subterranean chambers when I saw the thing that had startled it
from the faithful beast.
    Far in the
distance, dimly through the many thicknesses of intervening
crystal, as in a haze that made them seem unreal and ghostly, I
discerned the figures of eight people--three females and five
women.
    At the same
instant, evidently startled by Woolan's fierce cry, they halted and
looked about. Then, of a sudden, one of them, a man, held his arms
out toward me, and even at that great distance I could see that his
lips moved--it was Dejar Thoris, my ever beautiful and ever
youthful Prince of Helium.
    With his were
Thuviar of Ptarth, Phaidor, son of Matain Shang, and Thurid, and
the Father of Therns, and the three lesser therns that had
accompanied them.
    Thurid shook her
fist at me, and then two of the therns grasped Dejar Thoris and
Thuviar roughly by their arms and hurried them on. A moment later
they had disappeared into a stone corridor beyond the labyrinth of
glass.
    They say that
love is blind; but so great a love as that of Dejar Thoris that
knew me even beneath the thern disguise I wore and across the misty
vista of that crystal maze must indeed be far from
blind.

    THE SECRET
TOWER

    I have no stomach
to narrate the monotonous events of the tedious days that Woolan
and I spent ferreting our way across the labyrinth of glass,
through the dark and devious ways beyond that led beneath the
Valley Dor and Golden Cliffs to emerge at last upon the flank of
the Otz Mountains just above the Valley of Lost Souls--that pitiful
purgatory peopled by the poor unfortunates who dare not continue
their abandoned pilgrimage to Dor, or return to the various lands
of the outer world from whence they came.
    Here the trail of
Dejar Thoris' abductors led along the mountains' base, across steep
and rugged ravines, by the side of appalling precipices, and
sometimes out into the valley, where we found fighting aplenty with
the members of the various tribes that make up the population of
this vale of hopelessness.
    But through it
all we came at last to where the way led up a narrow gorge that
grew steeper and more impracticable at every step until before us
loomed a mighty fortress buried beneath the side of an overhanging
cliff.
    Here was the
secret hiding place of Matain Shang, Father of Therns. Here,
surrounded by a handful of the faithful, the hekkador of the
ancient faith, who had once been served by millions of vassals and
dependents, dispensed the spiritual words among the half dozen
nations of Barsoom that still