ct us!" said Ali Khan in a shuddering whisper.
"She was a devil of the wilds. Press on, Sahib. We should not be here in
the dark."

There was nothing else to do. We made the best speed we could, and the
trees grew more dense and the trail fainter between the close trunks,
and so the night came bewildering with the expectation that we must pass
the night unfed and unarmed in the cold of the heights. They might send
out a search party from The House in the Woods--that was still a hope,
if there were no other. And then, very gradually and wonderfully the
moon dawned over the tree tops and flooded the wood with mysterious
silver lights and about her rolled the majesty of the stars. We pressed
on into the heart of the night. From the dense black depths we emerged
at last. An open glade lay before us--the trees falling back to right
and left to disclose--what?

A long low house of marble, unlit, silent, bathed in pale splendour and
shadow. About it stood great deodars, clothed in clouds of the white
blossoming clematis, ghostly and still. Acacias hung motionless trails
of heavily scented bloom as if carved in ivory. It was all silent as
death. A flight of nobly sculptured steps led up to a broad veranda and
a wide open door with darkness behind it. Nothing more.

I forced myself to shout in Hindustani--the cry seeming a brutal outrage
upon the night, and an echo came back numbed in the black woods. I tried
once more and in vain. We stood absorbed also into the silence.

"Ya Alla! it is a house of the dead!" whispered Ali Khan, shuddering at
my shoulder,--and even as the words left his lips I understood where we
were. "It is the Sukh Mandir." I said. "It is the House of the Maharao
of Ranipur."

It was impossible to be in Ranipur and hear nothing of the dead house
of the forest and Ali Khan had heard--God only knows what tales. In his
terror all discipline, all the inborn respect of the native forsook him,
and without word or sign he turned and fled along the track, crashing
through the forest blind and mad with fear. It would have been insanity
to follow him, and in India the first rule of life is that the Sahib
shows no fear, so I left him to his fate whatever it might be, believing
at the same time that a little reflection and dread of the lonely forest
would bring him to heel quickly.

I stood there and the stillness flowed like water about me. It was
as though I floated upon it--bathed in quiet. My thoughts adjusted