f the sombre heavens were bringing forth
brood upon brood of fiery serpents, and greeting the birth of each with
ear-splitting peals of Titanic laughter.

Then came the rain:--not in mere drops, but in a solid sheet of water,
blinding, drenching, stupefying. At the same instant the fury of the
storm culminated in a blaze of white light that seemed to spring upon
them from all sides at once, with a shout as of fiends let loose; and,
through the echoing after-roll of thunder, came a sharper, harsher
sound,--the death note of a mighty tree.

Lenox and his wife faced one another involuntarily with startled looks.

"How appalling!--What was it?" she asked between two breaths.

"A pine struck somewhere up the _khud_. Not frightened, are you,
lass?" he added with tender concern. "It's the very thing you wanted.
You've got your thrilling finale with a vengeance!"

A clatter of breaking branches made him look up. "Great God!" he
cried, on a note of alarm. "Back your pony sharp. It's coming down on
the top of us!"

And as she obeyed, with the swift instinct of fear, Desmond's voice
reached him through the rush of the rain.

"Look out for yourself, Lenox! She's safe enough."

But before the words were out, the upper half of a great deodar crashed
down upon the narrow path, and a long branch struck the Galloway's
shoulder with tremendous force. For an instant Shaitan staggered under
the blow:--then horse, and man, and tree were hurled headlong down the
steep, rain-lashed ravine.

A great cry broke from Quita: and in that cry, and the white, rigid
repression that followed it, Garth had his answer to the question he
had never asked.

For the hundredth part of a second all seven sat paralysed by the
hideous thing that had happened before their eyes, and by the hopeless
nature of the drop down which Lenox had disappeared:--wiped out, as
though he had never been.

Then Desmond's practical vigour asserted itself, and he sprang lightly
to the ground.

"Here, take hold of the Demon, some one!"

And it was Quita who leant forward and grasped the bridle with a steady
hand. Her action gave him the chance he wanted of getting close enough
to speak a few words of encouragement in a hurried undertone.

"Don't lose heart. It's an ugly drop. But he fell clear of the tree;
and these _khuds_ are the most chancy things imaginable. I'm off after
him, as fast as hands and feet can take me."

Speech was beyond her; but she