to lead them astray when they
are searching for the right path to the next world in which they are to
begin a fresh existence.

On this strange, bewildering spectacle an English girl looked down from
a small balcony not twenty feet above the courtyard. And the sight of
her caused the attention of many of the spectators to wander from the
Mystery Play. The fat old Penlop frequently looked across the quadrangle
at her from his gallery and as often uttered some coarse jest about her
to his grinning followers, while he raised a chased silver goblet filled
with _murwa_, the native liquor, to his lips.

It was Muriel Benson. For weeks she had been a prisoner in the lamasery,
cloistered in a suite of well-furnished rooms and waited on by a
close-cropped nun. She had been surprised in the bungalow and
overpowered by three of the Chinamen before she realised her danger or
could seize a weapon with which to defend herself. Had she been able to
snatch up a revolver she would have made a desperate fight for freedom.
But with fettered hands, a helpless captive, she had been carried away
on a mule. From the first she had recognised the pock-marked, one-eyed
leader of the gang as the _Amban's_ officer, and so had known who was
the author and cause of her abduction. For days she had been borne along
up the rough track over the mountains, through narrow, high-walled
passes, down deep valleys and across rushing torrents, closely guarded
but always treated with respect. Her captors used broken Tibetan and
Bhutanese when they desired to communicate with her, but they answered
none of her questions. She had dreaded reaching their destination, where
she expected to find Yuan Shi Hung awaiting her; and once, in fear of
it, she had tried to throw herself down a precipice along the brink of
which the path ran. After that she had been roped to a big, powerful
Manchu.

On her arrival at the monastery she learned from her garrulous
nun-attendant that the _Amban_ had been summoned to Pekin, where a
revolution had taken place and his friends there hoped to make him
President, which he regarded as a step towards the Imperial throne. The
monks of the monastery were his faithful allies on account of his
relationship to the powerful Abbott of the Yellow Lama Temple in the
Chinese capital. They had agreed to guard his prisoner, if his men
succeeded in capturing her, until he returned or sent for her.

At first the girl, relieved of the dread of fall