ain, for he
was very curious on this point, "the same lovely face I see to-day?"

"Mayhap--as thou wilt," she answered coldly; "also it is the spirit that
matters, not the outward seeming, though men in their blindness think
otherwise. Perchance my face is but as thy heart fashions it, or as my
will presents it to the sight and fancy of its beholders. But hark! The
scouts have touched."

As Ayesha spoke a sound of distant shouting was borne upon the wind,
and presently we saw a fringe of horsemen falling back slowly upon our
foremost line. It was only to report, however, that the skirmishers of
Atene were in full retreat. Indeed, a prisoner whom they brought with
them, on being questioned by the priests, confessed at once that the
Khania had no mind to meet us upon the holy Mountain. She proposed to
give battle on the river's farther bank, having for a defence its waters
which we must ford, a decision that showed good military judgment.

So it happened that on this day there was no fighting.

All that afternoon we descended the slopes of the Mountain, more swiftly
by far than we had climbed them after our long flight from the city of
Kaloon. Before sunset we came to our prepared camping ground, a wide and
sloping plain that ended at the crest of the Valley of Dead Bones, where
in past days we had met our mysterious guide. This, however, we did not
reach through the secret mountain tunnel along which she had led us, the
shortest way by miles, as Ayesha told us now, since it was unsuited to
the passage of an army.

Bending to the left, we circled round a number of unclimbable koppies,
beneath which that tunnel passed, and so at length arrived upon the brow
of the dark ravine where we could sleep safe from attack by night.

Here a tent was pitched for Ayesha, but as it was the only one, Leo
and I with our guard bivouacked among some rocks at a distance of a
few hundred yards. When she found that this must be so, Ayesha was very
angry and spoke bitter words to the chief who had charge of the food and
baggage, although, he, poor man, knew nothing of tents.

Also she blamed Oros, who replied meekly that he had thought us captains
accustomed to war and its hardships. But most of all she was angry with
herself, who had forgotten this detail, and until Leo stopped her with a
laugh of vexation, went on to suggest that we should sleep in the tent,
since she had no fear of the rigours of the mountain cold.

The end of it wa