stumbled once. They seemed to be diving
down into the bowels of the earth. They were in pitch-black darkness,
for the stone had swung to behind them of its own accord. The wall on
either side of them was wet with slime and the stink of decaying ages
rose and almost stifled them. But the priest kept on descending, so fast
that the other two had trouble to keep up with him, and he hummed to
himself as though he knew the road and liked it.

"The bottom!" he called back suddenly. "From now the going is easy,
until we rise again. We pass now under the city-wall."

But they could see nothing and hear nothing except their own footfalls
swishing in the ooze beneath them. Even the priest's words seemed to
be lost at once, as though he spoke into a blanket, for the air they
breathed was thicker than a mist and just as damp. They walked on, along
a level, wet, stone passage for at least five minutes, feeling their way
with one band on the wall.

"Steps, now!" said the priest. "Have a care, now, for the lower ones are
slippery."

Ruth was regaining consciousness. She began to move and tried once or
twice to speak.

"Here, thou!" growled the Risaldar. "Thou art a younger man than I--come
back here. Help with the memsahib."

The priest came back a step or two, but Suliman declined his aid,
snarling vile insults at him.

"I can manage!" he growled. "Get thou behind me, Mahommed Khan, in case
I slip!"

So Mahommed Khan came last, and they slipped and grunted upward, round
and round a spiral staircase that was hewn out of solid rock. No light
came through from anywhere to help them, but the priest climbed on, as
though he were accustomed to the stair and knew the way from constant
use. After five minutes of steady climbing the stone grew gradually dry.
The steps became smaller, too, and deeper, and not so hard to climb.
Suddenly the priest reached out his arm and pulled at something or other
that hung down in the darkness. A stone in the wall rolled open. A flood
of light burst in and nearly blinded them.

"We are below Kharvani's temple!" announced the priest. He led them
through the opening into a four-square room hewn from the rock below the
foundations of the temple some time in the dawn of history. The light
that had blinded them when they first emerged proved to be nothing but
the flicker of two small oil lamps that hung suspended by brass chains
from the painted ceiling. The only furniture was mats spread on the
cut-