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She turned suddenly and pointed to the barred windows. "You see this room,"
she said, "with the black eunuch outside? Wherever you see these you will know
that there are women, for with very few exceptions they are never allowed out of
captivity. They are considered and really are more violent than the men."
For several minutes the two sat in silence, and then the younger woman turned
to the older.
"Is there no way to escape?" she asked.
The old woman pointed again to the barred windows and then to the door, saying:
And there is the armed eunuch. And if you should pass him, how could you
"
reach the street? And if you reached the street, how could you pass through the
city to the outer wall? And even if, by some miracle, you should gain the outer
wall, and, by another miracle, you should be permitted to pass through the gate,
could you ever hope to traverse the forest where the great black lions roam and
feed upon men? No!" she exclaimed, answering her own question, "there is no
escape, for after one had escaped from the palace and the city and the forest it
would be but to invite death in the frightful desert land beyond.
"In sixty years you are the first to find this buried city. In a thousand no denizen
of this valley has ever left it, and within the memory of man, or even in their
legends, none had found them prior to my coming other than a single warlike
giant, the story of whom has been handed down from father to son.
"I think from the description that he must have been a Spaniard, a giant of a man
in buckler and helmet, who fought his way through the terrible forest to the city
gate, who fell upon those who were sent out to capture him and slew them with
his mighty sword. And when he had eaten of the vegetables from the gardens,
and the fruit from the trees and drank of the water from the stream, he turned
about and fought his way back through the forest to the mouth of the gorge. But
though he escaped the city and the forest he did not escape the desert. For a
legend runs that the king, fearful that he would bring others to attack them, sent
a party after him to slay him.
"
For three weeks they did not find him, for they went in the wrong direction, but
at last they came upon his bones picked clean by the vultures, lying a day's
march up the same gorge through which you and I entered the valley. I do not
know," continued the old woman, "that this is true. It is just one of their many
legends."
"Yes," said the girl, "it is true. I am sure it is true, for I have seen the skeleton and
the corroded armor of this great giant."
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