The Waterbury Democrat., 1937-11-27
CHAPTER VIII

It was Wednesday morning when excitement reached it's highest in the archeologist's camp Bob had the party up in the gray of dawn.
 Lets eat and get goingl" he urged. we can get Into the castle before Q o'clock, I think. Shouldn't be hard to place the last two lad ders.".
 It was hard, and it was rather dangerous, but the job was done Hoffman, who had meant to be- gin some of his lovemaking, as contracted, didn't find any sort Of chance for it, so had did BoE drive them. It was past nine when the ladders were all safe Bob himself might have climbed 70 feet then and gone back into the castle, but instead he came back down.
 "You are going next, Miss Lane" he smiled at Mary Melissa "This is really your party, you know"
 Quite by chance he looked ther at Honey Bee Girl. The Indian was staring longily upward. Bot kind of heart anyway, was instant ly touched.
 Say, Honey Bee, would you like to go up? With the first party I mean? ome on, if you want to You follow Miss Lane, then wei bring up the rear"
 He had no idea what feelings his bland invitation created ir each girls heart. Mary Melisse could have slapped him almost she told herself. But even, so, sht recognized his motive, and ad' mired him for 1t. Honey Bet nodded, cold, impassive.
 This first climb up took more than 20 minutes. Nobody spoke Bob stood at the bottom of eacl ladder, steadying it until the girl reached the next ledge and th' next ladder above. When they had gone single file over the rim and stood by the castle door fac. ing the bright morning sun, Bot made quite an occasion of 1t.
 Mary Melissa Lane" he pro. claimed, you are the first white woman ever to set foot in this fortress. Moreover, you are the first woman of any sort-and proD' ably the second human being-tc visit here in at least 1000 years|
 The thought of 1t thrilled Lissa She felt a queer tightening of her fhroat She said nothing. She smiled at Bob, and together they stared avross the 200 mbiles of haze and blue and purple and red spread before them-a gigantic palette: oi pastel paints daubed there by Na- turo, and oddly alive by the morn- ing motion of the sun.
 Mary Melissa gave thought to the contrast this view meant in her life. In New York City her home was a de luxe apartment 40 stories Up from 57th street. She could LOOK from her bedroom window and study the most magnificent collec- ton of man-made wonders In the history of the world. The great buik of "Radio City" loomed there. and beyond 1t the graceful needle oi the Empire State Building, highest on earth. A veritable sea of roofs and penthouscs, spires and blocks and castles and domes, surgeo there in Babylonian disorder, yet with a strange If intricate pattern which in other moods seemed to il, in machine-like detail. Chips .oi ships floated on the Hudson to tho right of her: congestion was forced from the left by still another water course. Permeating 1t all were tht working, playing, building, moving eternally restless ants Of Manhat' tan.
 Now she was on @ similar height looking, incidentally, from tht porch of yet another apartment the grandeur, somehow, was mucf the same. .,
 "Its-magniflcent. pr. Barry!' she murmured 1t, barely audible.
 The silence, not the roar of traf' fic, was dominant here. Skyscrap' CTS were not 40 stories, nor 50 they were rocky peakes hundred sstories". or q thousand. A few birds could be seen. Grazing 1T their new corral 600 feet doWr were the expeditions mules ane horses--but in all the expanse be- fore them was not another visible living thing.
 Bob sensed her mood, and thu spell of the place gripped him too caused him momentarily to forge his science, the past that stood if masonry behind them. He gazed a
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