Slowly she got to her feet. Perhaps she would have dared and gone;
perhaps she would have swallowed pride and her negative, and made
one more appeal. She turned hesitantly and saw the devil.

It was a small devil on stilts, not more than three or four inches
tall, but there was no mistaking his identity. No other living
thing could possess such demoniac little red-hot pin points of
eyes, or be so bristly and grisly and vicious. The stilts suddenly
folded flat, and the devil rushed upon his prey. The girl stepped
back; her foot turned and caught, and--

"Of course," the patient voice below was saying, "if you really
think that you couldn't find the road, I could draw you a map and
send it up by the hair route. But I really think--"

"BLUMP!"

The rock had turned over on his unprotected head and flattened him
out forever. Such was his first thought. When he finally collected
himself, his eyeglasses, and his senses, he sustained a second
shock more violent than the first.

Two paces away, the Voice, duly and most appropriately embodied,
sat half-facing him. The Voice's eyes confirmed his worst
suspicions, and, dazed though they were at the moment, there were
deep lights in them that wholly disordered his mental mechanism.
Nor were her first words such as to restore his deranged
faculties.