him to the end, and that's
why he himself sets such store on the place. You have a good chance if I
ask for a permit.

"He told me the story and since it is the heart of my own I give it
briefly. Many centuries ago the Ranipur Kingdom was ruled by the Maharao
Rai Singh a prince of the great lunar house of the Rajputs. Expecting
a bride from some far away kingdom (the name of this is unrecorded)
he built the Hall of Pleasure as a summer palace, a house of rare and
costly beauty. A certain great chamber he lined with carved figures of
the Gods and their stories, almost unsurpassed for truth and life. So,
with the pine trees whispering about it the secret they sigh to tell,
he hoped to create an earthly Paradise with this Queen in whom all
loveliness was perfected. And then some mysterious tragedy ended all
his hopes. It was rumoured that when the Princess came to his court,
she was, by some terrible mistake, received with insult and offered the
position only of one of his women. After that nothing was known. Certain
only is it that he fled to the hills, to the home of his broken hope,
and there ended his days in solitude, save for the attendance of two
faithful friends who would not abandon him even in the ghostly quiet of
the winter when the pine boughs were heavy with snow and a spectral moon
stared at the panthers shuffling through the white wastes beneath. Of
these two Rup Singh's ancestor was one. And in his thirty fifth year
the Maharao died and his beauty and strength passed into legend and his
kingdom was taken by another and the jungle crept silently over his Hall
of Pleasure and the story ended.

"There was not a memory of the place up there," Olesen went on.
"Certainly I never heard anything of it when I went up to the Shipki
in 1904. But I had been able to be useful to Rup Singh and he gave me a
permit for The House in the Woods, and I stopped there for a few days'
shooting. I remember that day so well. I was wandering in the dense
woods while my men got their midday grub, and I missed the trail somehow
and found myself in a part where the trees were dark and thick and the
silence heavy as lead. It was as if the trees were on guard--they stood
shoulder to shoulder and stopped the way. Well, I halted, and had a
notion there was something beyond that made me doubt whether to go on.
I must have stood there five minutes hesitating. Then I pushed on,
bruising the thick ferns under my shooting boots and stooping u