anied by a small army of huntsmen and warriors
as well, marched in quest of the den of the tiger. It was discovered about
nightfall, and having tethered a small boy near the entrance, that his
screams when being devoured might give notice of the tiger's issue from or
return to his habitation, the Bonze and his myrmidons took up a flank
position and awaited the dawn. The distant howls of roaming beasts of prey
entirely deprived the holy man of his rest, but nothing worse befell him,
and when in the morning the small boy, instead of providing the tiger with
a breakfast, was heard crying for his own, the besiegers mustered up
courage to enter the cavern. The glare of their torches revealed no tiger:
but, to the Bonze's inexpressible delight, two females lay on the floor of
the cave, corresponding in all respects to the description of the old man.
Their costume was that of the preceding century. One was wrinkled and
hoary; the inexpressible loveliness of the other, who might have seen
seventeen or eighteen summers, extorted a universal cry of admiration,
followed by a hush of enraptured silence. Warm, flexible, fresh in colour,
breathing naturally as in slumber, the figures lay, the younger woman's arm
underneath the elder woman's neck, and her chin nestling on the other's
shoulder. The countenance of each seemed to indicate happy dreams.

"Can this indeed be but a trance?" simultaneously questioned several of the
Bonze's followers.

"_Fiat experimentum in corpore vili!_" exclaimed the Bonze; and he thrust
his long hunting spear into the elder woman's bosom. Blood poured forth
freely, but there was no change in the expression of the countenance. No
struggle announced dissolution; not until the body grew chill and the limbs
stiff could they be sure the old woman was indeed dead.

"Carry the young woman like porcelain," ordered the priest, and like the
most fragile porcelain the exquisite young beauty was borne from the cavern
smiling in her trance and utterly unconscious, while the corpse of her aged
companion was abandoned to the hyaenas. So often did the bearers pause to
look on her beauty that it was found necessary to drape the countenance
entirely, until reaching the closed sedan in which, vigilantly watched by
the Bonze, she was transported to the Imperial palace.

And so she was brought to the Emperor, and he worshipped her. She was laid
on a couch of cloth of gold in the Imperial apartments. Wonderful was the
cont