usly, indeed that his frightful efforts
caused the blood to gush out of his mouth from some burst vessel in the
lungs.

Then sight and hearing failed me, and thinking that this was death, I
fell and remembered no more.

Why I was not killed outright I do not know, unless in their hurry the
disguised soldiers thought me already dead, or perhaps that my life was
to be spared also. At least, beyond the knock upon the head I received
no injury.

CHAPTER XXII

THE LOOSING OF THE POWERS

When I came to myself again, it was daylight. I saw the calm, gentle
face of Qros bending over me as he poured some strong fluid down my
throat that seemed to shoot through all my body, and melt a curtain in
my mind. I saw also that beside him stood Ayesha.

"Speak, man, speak," she said in a terrible voice. "What hast chanced
here? Thou livest, then where is my lord? Where hast thou hid my lord?
Tell me--or die."

It was the vision that I saw when my senses left me in the snow of the
avalanche, fulfilled to the last detail!

"Atene has taken him," I answered.

"Atene has taken him and thou art left alive?"

"Do not be wrath with me," I answered, "it is no fault of mine. Little
wonder we were deceived after thou hadst said that thou mightest summon
us ere dawn."

Then as briefly as I could I told the story.

She listened, went to where our murdered guards lay with unstained
spears, and looked at them.

"Well for these that they are dead," she exclaimed. "Now, Holly, thou
seest what is the fruit of mercy. The men whose lives I gave my lord
have failed him at his need."

Then she passed forward to the spot where Leo was captured. Here lay a
broken sword--Leo's--that had been the Khan Rassen's, and two dead men.
Both of these were clothed in some tight-fitting black garments, having
their heads and faces whitened with chalk and upon their vests a rude
imitation of a human skeleton, also daubed in chalk.

"A trick fit to frighten fools with," she said contemptuously. "But oh!
that Atene should have dared to play the part of Ayesha, that she should
have dared!" and she clenched her little hand. "See, surprised and
overwhelmed, yet he fought well. Say! was he hurt, Holly? It comes upon
me--no, tell me that I see amiss."

"Not much, I think," I answered doubtfully, "a little blood was running
from his mouth, no more. Look, there go the stains of it upon that
rock."

"For every drop I'll take a hundred lives. By myself I s