How different this journey by comparison with that of a year since, when the cave girl had been leading the terror-stricken Waldo Emerson in flight from the bad men toward, to him, an equally horrible fate at the hands of Korth and Flatfoot!
Then the forest glades echoed to the pads of fierce beasts and the stealthy passage of naked, human horrors. No twig snapped that did not portend instant and terrifying death.
Now Korth and Flatfoot were dead at the hands of the metamorphosed Waldo. The racking cough was gone. He had encountered the bad men and others like them and come away with honors. Even Nagoola, the sleek, black devil-cat of the hideous nights, no longer sent the slightest tremor through the rehabilitated nerves.
Did not Thandar wear Nagoola's pelt about his shoulder and loins—a pelt that he had taken in hand to hand encounter with the dread beast?
Slowly they walked beneath the shade of giant trees, beside pleasant streams, or, again, across open valleys where the grass grew knee high and countless, perfumed wild flowers opened a pathway before their naked feet.
At night they slept where night found them. Sometimes in the deserted lair of a wild beast, or again perched among the branches of a spreading tree where parallel branches permitted the construction of rude platforms.
And Thandar was always most solicitous to see that Nadara's couch was of the softest grasses and that his own lay at a little distance from hers and in a position where he might best protect her from prowling beasts.
Again was Nadara puzzled, but still she made no comment.
Finally they came to her village.