rd, for she is alone."

"Is she mad," ejaculated Leo, "to wander about in such a place at
midnight? Well, it is like her."

I too thought it was like her, who did nothing that others would have
done, and yet I hesitated. Then I remembered that Ayesha had said she
might send for us; also I was sure that if any trick had been intended
we should not have been warned to bring an escort. So we called the
guard--there were twelve of them--took our spears and swords and
started.

We were challenged by both the first and second lines of sentries, and I
noticed that as we gave them the password the last picket, who of course
recognized us, looked astonished. Still, if they had doubts they did not
dare to express them. So we went on.

Now we began to descend the sides of the ravine by a very steep path,
with which the priest, our guide, seemed to be curiously familiar, for
he went down it as though it were the stairway of his own house.

"A strange place to take us to at night," said Leo doubtfully, when
we were near the bottom and the chief of the bodyguard, that great
red-bearded hunter who had been mixed up in the matter of the
snow-leopard also muttered some words of remonstrance. Whilst I was
trying to catch what he said, of a sudden something white walked into
the patch of moonlight at the foot of the ravine, and we saw that it
was the veiled figure of Ayesha herself. The chief saw her also and said
contentedly--"Hes! Hes!"

"Look at her," grumbled Leo, "strolling about in that haunted hole as
though it were Hyde Park;" and on he went at a run.

The figure turned and beckoned to us to follow her as she glided
forward, picking her way through the skeletons which were scattered
about upon the lava bed of the cleft. Thus she went on into the shadow
of the opposing cliff that the moonlight did not reach. Here in the wet
season a stream trickled down a path which it had cut through the rock
in the course of centuries, and the grit that it had brought with it
was spread about the lava floor of the ravine, so that many of the bones
were almost completely buried in the sand.

These, I noticed, as we stepped into the shadow, were more numerous than
usual just here, for on all sides I saw the white crowns of skulls, or
the projecting ends of ribs and thigh bones. Doubtless, I thought to
myself, that streamway made a road to the plain above, and in some past
battle, the fighting around it was very fierce and the slaughter gre