h was lost in the shriek and
crash of the raging elements.

For even as he moved there was a terrific roar as of tons of exploding
dynamite, and a shriek of wind as it tore through the building, blowing
out the little flickering lights, leaving the place pitch black save
for the steady light of the full moon.

Then he swayed like a drunken man as the floor rose in a great wave and
yet another, heaving the flags this way and that, cracking and
splitting in every direction as it subsided.

"Leonie!" he shouted, though no sound could be heard above the
appalling din. "Leonie! Leonie!"

He saw her lying in a pool of moonlight as though asleep, and near her
knelt the native, with arms outstretched above her, sheltering her.

There was a moment of complete dead silence, and then with a tearing,
rending sound the dome and the temple walls split from top to base; and
with a thundering crash the great block of stone upon which was carved
the image of Kali the Terrible split in two, toppled over and fell upon
the kneeling priest.

Herds of screaming beasts hurled themselves through the riven walls and
fled across the temple floor, fighting blindly to escape. Monkeys in
hundreds scrambled over the mounds of fallen bricks, chattering and
calling like lost, frightened children; a tiger with one bound landed
noiselessly a few feet from those two in the moonlight, half reared
with a short coughing roar and bounded as noiselessly away. And God
alone knows what saved the three from instant death among the tottering
ruins.

The power of Love perchance.

The son of princes sheltering the girl slowly, oh! slowly straightened
himself, when a prolonged silence seemed to indicate the end of the
greatest earthquake that ever swept the Sunderbunds Jungle.

Blood streamed from the side of his head, battered in by a broken
fragment of the high altar that had been hurled through the air; his
left shoulder was in splinters, crushed by the collapse of the roof
which must have killed Leonie if he had not covered her with his body;
blood spouted from some great severed artery in the arm which seemed to
hang by a thread from the splintered shoulder; yet was his face aglow
with light and love, and his eyes afire with happiness as he raised a
tawny tress of hair and pressed it to his lips.

He was dying, quickly, yet he turned his head and smiled at the sound
of Jan Cuxson's boots scrambling over the impeding heaps of stone. For
one sec