they seized us ... two men held my arms--the third----" His
voice broke.

"He--held Miss Ryder?"

"Yes. He wasn't rough with her." The words, which happened to be untrue,
sounded painfully inadequate in his own ears. "They gave us no time to
explain anything, but took us before the Chief Priest, or someone of the
kind, and stated that we had been found desecrating the Temple by our
unhallowed presence."

"You explained that you had done it in ignorance?"

"Of course. But"--he smiled rather cynically--"they had evidently heard
that before. You know the Americans who got into trouble there had
really laid a plot to carry away some memento of their visit, and they
thought we were after loot of some kind, too, I suppose."

"They wouldn't listen?"

"Oh, yes, they listened all right while I tried, with Miss Ryder's help,
to explain. She knew a few words of their tongue, and somehow a
situation of that sort sharpens one's wits to the extent of helping one
to understand a strange lingo. The upshot was we were blindfolded"--he
saw Cheniston wince at the thought of the indignity to the girl he had
loved--"and led away. Later we were placed in a conveyance of some sort,
a bullock cart, I imagine, and driven for hours over some of the worst
ground I've ever struck."

"Well?" The interest of the story was gripping the other man through all
his horror, and his tone had lost its hostility for the moment. "And
then?"

"Finally we were released, led into a small hut, our eyes were
unbandaged, and we were informed that our fate was being deliberated,
and the result would be made known to us at sunset."

"And at sunset----"

"At sunset we were sent for to the presence of a still more important
personage, another High Priest, I suppose. We were taken into a kind of
presence chamber, across the large courtyard, and found our friends of
the morning, kow-towing to this still higher potentate. He didn't waste
words on us. Through the miserable creature who had interpreted for us
earlier, he made us understand that the penalty for setting foot in
their holy place was death--by strangulation as a general rule----"

Cheniston's lips turned white, and his cigarette dropped to the floor;
but though Anstice saw his agitation he paid no attention.

"But in consideration of the fact that we were English and one of us was
a woman"--Cheniston uttered an involuntary exclamation--"our sentence
was that we should be shot in the courtyard at