in it nothing of the strange accent peculiar to Sephar's inhabitants.
"Who are you?" Dylara asked.
"I am Nada—a slave."
The girl nodded. Who was it this woman reminded her of? "I am Dylara, Nada. Tell me, why is it you speak as do the cave people?"
"I am of the cave people," replied the woman. "There are many of us here. The mountains about Sephar contain the caves of many tribes. Often Sephar's warriors make war on our people and carry many away to become slaves."
Dylara watched her as she spoke. Despite a youthful appearance, she must have been twice the cave-girl's age; about the same height but more fully developed. Her figure, under the simple tunic, was beautifully proportioned; her face the loveliest Dylara had ever seen. There was an indefinable air of breeding and poise in her manner, softened by warm brown eyes and an expression of sympathetic understanding.
Nada endured the close appraisal without self-consciousness. Finally she said: "You must be hungry. Come; sit here and eat."
Dylara obeyed without further urging. Nada watched her in silence until the girl's appetite had been dulled, then said: "How did they happen to get you?"
Dylara told her, briefly. For some obscure reason she could not bring herself to mention Tharn by name. Just the thought of him, falling beneath a Sepharian club, brought a sharp ache to her throat.
THERE was a far-away expression in Nada's eyes as Dylara finished her story. "I knew a warrior once—one very much like the young man who took you from your father's caves. He was a mighty chief—and my mate. Many summers ago I was captured near our caves as I walked at the jungle's edge. A war party from a strange tribe had crept close to our caves during the night, planning to raid us at dawn. They seized me; but my cries aroused my people, and the war party fled, taking me with them. They lost their way in the darkness, and after many weary marches stumbled across a hunting party from Sephar. In the fight that followed they killed almost all of us, sparing only three—and me. I have been here ever since."
Dylara caught the undercurrent of utter hopelessness in the woman's words, and she felt a sudden rush of sympathy well up within her.
"Tharn was a chief's son," she said. "Had he lived, I am sure he—" She stopped there, stricken into silence by the horror on Nada's face.
The slave woman rose unsteadily from the bed and seized Dylara's hands.
"Tharn—did you say Tharn?"
The girl, shocked by the pain and grief in the face of the woman, could only nod.
"He—is—dead?"
Again Dylara nodded.
Nada swayed and would have fallen had not Dylara held tightly to her wrists. Tears began to squeeze from her closed eyes, to trickle down the drawn white cheeks.
And then Dylara found her voice. "What is it, Nada? What is wrong?"
The woman swallowed with an effort, fighting for control. "I," she whispered, "am Tharn's mate!"
At first, Dylara thought she meant he whom the Sepharians had slain. And then the truth came to her.
The Tharn she had known was Nada's son!
Impulsively she drew the woman down beside her, holding her tightly
