“So!” said She, “safely have we come, though once I feared that the rocking stone would fall with you, and precipitate you into the bottomless depths beneath, for I do believe that the cleft goeth down to the very womb of the world.  The rock whereon the stone resteth hath crumbled beneath the swinging weight.  And now that he,” nodding towards Job, who was sitting on the floor, feebly wiping his forehead with a red cotton pocket-handkerchief, “whom they rightly call the ‘Pig,’ for as a pig is he stupid, hath let fall the plank, it will not be easy to return across the gulf, and to that end must I make a plan.  But now rest a while, and look upon this place.  What think ye that it is?”

“We know not,” I answered.

“Wouldst thou believe, oh Holly, that once a man did choose this airy nest for a daily habitation, and did here endure for many years; leaving it only but one day in every twelve to seek food and water and oil that the people brought, more than he could carry, and laid as an offering in the mouth of the tunnel through which we passed hither?”

We looked up wonderingly, and she continued—­

“Yet so it was.  There was a man—­Noot, he named himself—­who, though he lived in the latter days, had of the wisdom of the sons of Kor.  A hermit was he, and a philosopher, and greatly skilled in the secrets of Nature, and he it was who discovered the Fire that I shall show you, which is Nature’s blood and life, and also that he who bathed therein, and breathed thereof, should live while Nature lives.  But like unto thee, oh Holly, this man, Noot, would not turn his knowledge to account.  ‘Ill,’ he said, ‘was it for man to live, for man was born to die.’  Therefore did he tell his secret to none, and therefore did he come and live here, where the seeker after Life must pass, and was revered of the Amahagger of the day as holy, and a hermit.  And when first I came to this country—­knowest thou how I came, Kallikrates?  Another time I will tell thee, for it is a strange tale—­I heard of this philosopher, and waited for him when he came to fetch his food, and returned with him hither, though greatly did I fear to tread the gulf.  Then did I beguile him with my beauty and my wit, and flatter him with my tongue, so that he led me down and showed me the Fire, and told me the secrets of the Fire, but he would not suffer me to step therein, and, fearing lest he should slay me, I refrained, knowing that the man was very old, and soon would die.  And I returned, having learned from him all that he knew of the wonderful Spirit of the World, and that was much, for the man was wise and very ancient, and by purity and abstinence, and the contemplations of his innocent mind, had worn thin the veil between that which we see and the great invisible truths, the whisper of whose wings at times we hear as they sweep through the gross air of the world.  Then—­it was but a very few days after, I met thee, my Kallikrates,