come out to save the world. I thought I'd help eggicate her a little, an'
so I sent her to Bill's place'"

"A crowd was gathering.... A slim, exquisitely formed woman in shimmering
silk was standing beside a huge brown bear"

"'The tunnel is closed,' she whispered.... 'That means we have just
forty-five minutes to live.... Let us not lie to one another.'"




CHAPTER I


It was all new--most of it singularly dramatic and even appalling to the
woman who sat with the pearl-gray veil drawn closely about her face. For
eighteen hours she had been a keenly attentive, wide-eyed, and partly
frightened bit of humanity in this onrush of "the horde." She had heard a
voice behind her speak of it as "the horde"--a deep, thick, gruff voice
which she knew without looking had filtered its way through a beard. She
agreed with the voice. It was the Horde--that horde which has always beaten
the trails ahead for civilization and made of its own flesh and blood the
foundation of nations. For months it had been pouring steadily into the
mountains--always in and never out, a laughing, shouting, singing,
blaspheming Horde, every ounce of it toughened sinew and red brawn, except
the Straying Angels. One of these sat opposite her, a dark-eyed girl with
over-red lips and hollowed cheeks, and she heard the bearded man say
something to his companions about "dizzy dolls" and "the little angel in
the other seat." This same voice, gruffened in its beard, had told her that