head of the horrible reptile that had scared me from my friend's corpse.
Pointing to that part of the drawing, Taee put to me a few questions
respecting the size and form of the monster, and the cave or chasm from
which it had emerged. His interest in my answers seemed so grave as
to divert him for a while from any curiosity as to myself or my
antecedents. But to my great embarrassment, seeing how I was pledged to
my host, he was just beginning to ask me where I came from, when Zee,
fortunately entered, and, overhearing him, said, "Taee, give to our
guest any information he may desire, but ask none from him in return. To
question him who he is, whence he comes, or wherefore he is here, would
be a breach of the law which my father has laid down in this house."

"So be it," said Taee, pressing his hand to his breast; and from that
moment, till the one in which I saw him last, this child, with whom I
became very intimate, never once put to me any of the questions thus
interdicted.



Chapter IX.


It was not for some time, and until, by repeated trances, if they are to
be so called, my mind became better prepared to interchange ideas with
my entertainers, and more fully to comprehend differences of manners
and customs, at first too strange to my experience to be seized by my
reason, that I was enabled to gather the following details respecting
the origin and history of the subterranean population, as portion of one
great family race called the Ana.