ange, numbing current
seemed to flow, upon my head, she muttered some swift words.

Instantly my eyes were opened, and, not upon the distant Mountain, but
in the air before me as it were, I saw Leo rolling over and over at
grips with a great snow-leopard, whilst the chief and huntsmen with him
ran round and round, seeking an opportunity to pierce the savage brute
with their spears and yet leave him unharmed.

Ayesha, rigid with terror, swayed to and fro at my side, till presently
the end came, for I could see Leo drive his long knife into the bowels
of the leopard, which at once grew limp, separated from him, and after
a struggle or two in the bloodstained snow, lay still. Then he rose,
laughing and pointing to his rent garments, whilst one of the huntsmen
came forward and began to bandage some wounds in his hands and thigh
with strips of linen torn from his under-robe.

The vision vanished suddenly as it had come, and I felt Ayesha leaning
heavily upon my shoulder like any other frightened woman, and heard her
gasp--"That danger also has passed by, but how many are there to follow?
Oh! tormented heart, how long canst thou endure!"

Then her wrath flamed up against the chief and his huntsmen, and
she summoned messengers and sent them out at speed with a litter and
ointments, bidding them to bear back the lord Leo and to bring his
companions to her very presence.

"Thou seest what days are mine, my Holly, aye, and have been these many
years," she said; "but those hounds shall pay me for this agony."

Nor would she suffer me to reason with her.

Four hours later Leo returned, limping after the litter in which,
instead of himself, for whom it was sent, lay a mountain sheep and the
skin of the snow-leopard that he had placed there to save the huntsmen
the labour of carrying them. Ayesha was waiting for him in the hall of
her dwelling, and gliding to him--I cannot say she walked--overwhelmed
him with mingled solicitude and reproaches. He listened awhile, then
asked--"How dost thou know anything of this matter? The leopard skin has
not yet been brought to thee."

"I know because I saw," she answered. "The worst hurt was above thy
knee; hast thou dressed it with the salve I sent?"

"Not I," he said. "But thou hast not left this Sanctuary; how didst thou
see? By thy magic?"

"If thou wilt, at least I saw, and Holly also saw thee rolling in the
snow with that fierce brute, while those curs ran round like scared
child