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.