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Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mithode. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 ^^;| I u KE'S SHRINE BV GRANT ALLEN At' i ifuK or ■..led Ordfis,- •' Bahylon," «' Philistia," "The V/onun Who Did," Etc. ^9 AMSTI ■IF Til . > OMPANY ■V : YORK ' 'S^^:.:.-~j:M^tii^,'^"Si£WSmf.'^--x ' KALEE'S SHRINE BY GRANT ALLEN AUTHOR OF «*Under Sealed Orders," "Babylon," " Philistia,** "The Woman Who Did," Etc. NEW AMSTERDAM BOOK COMPANY 156 : FIFTH : AVENUE : NEW : YORK Authorized edition for the United States KALEE'S SHRINE. PROLOGUE. IN INDIA. White-robed and dusky-faced, the ayah hurried with trembling: footsteps along the narrow path that threaded tortuously the tangled underbrush of that arid thicket. Her feet and ankles were bare to the knee, and the fine gray dust that covered them deep with its clinging powder bore witness eloquently to the distance she had already carried her precious burden— a pretty, sleeping, two-year- old baby. It was not her own, but a white man's daughter ; and the white man was a great English sahib. At every rustle of the bushes in the jungle by her side, the woman shrank back with terrible earnestness— shrank, and pressed the sleeping baby tight to her bosom ; for tigers lurked among the tangled brake, and the cobra might at any moment 5 6 Kalee's Shrine. cross her path with his deadly hood erect and hiss- ing. But still she hurried on. alone and breathless, that one solitary Hindu figure, tall and graceful in her snowy robes, with the unconscious white child strained against her breast, and her heart leaping wildly as at every step the bangles clanked together on her brown ankles. The fierce hot sun poured down upon her head mercilessly from above, and the little green lizards darted away with lithe' and sinuous motion at the fall of her naked dusky foot upon the staring gray line of the path behind them. The woman was flying, though no one pursued her; flying with the stealthy, noiseless Indian tread, and looking back furtively over her dark shoulder with eager fear every now and again, to listen for the hoofs of approaching horses. But no one came ; no one followed her: and she wound her way silently, alone, through the jungle, with the instinct of the serpent, and the light, unwearied, gliding motion of the Hindu race. The sun had reached the summit of the heaven now, and the sahibs at home would soon be thinking it time for tiffin. She had risked all upon one desperate throw. If only she could return in time to escape detection I Presently a little clearing in the thicket appeared, and the grimy path ended at last in front of a tiny' Kalee's Shrine. 7 shabby, brick-built temple. Around it, the cleared area lay thick in dust, and the garish Indian sun glared hotter than ever on the crumbling plaster of that neglected shrine— the shrine of a hated and proscribed worship. An old man crouched in the dust before the door. He was a squalid old man, wrinkled and discolored with age and filth ; his matted white locks straggled wildly about his black forehead, and his lean ribs showed in visible outline through the dark skin that seemed to hang loose in folds around them. A few foul rags just covered his loins, and the rags and the mrm seemed almost to have grown together into one huddled mass by long companionship and as- cetic filthiness. He did not lift his eyes as the woman approached, but went on staring vacantly at the temple before him, and repeating, in a low monotonous sing-song, the burden of a ghastly Hindu hymn to the terrible Kalee : " Oh, thou that delightest in fresh warm blood, in red blood, in uhe slaughter of thine enemies; girt round with skulls! we offer up to thee the heart of the victim." An outcast dog that lay by the ascetic's side was munching away at an oddly-shaped bone. It was round and smooth, and bare at the top ; on the sides 8 Kalet's Shrine. some fragments of long black hair still clung to tiie horrid object. The dog pawed it and gnawed it with his teeth, and the shallow scalp, rolled in the dust, yet showed raw and hideous where his fangs had bared it. A vulture perched on top of the shrine ; his beak was red, and his eyes closed stupidly in the broad sunshine. The woman placed herself full in front of the beg- gar-priest, and with an imperious gesture of her soft round hand and arm, beckoned his attention. The old man slowly rose at her bidding, shook off the dust from his back and shoulders, and stood, a tottering mass of bones and rags, a gaunt outline of fleshless humanity, bowed double almost to the ground, before her. **Well?" he asked inquiringly, in a shrill quaver. *'What do you wish? Why have you come.? What brings you here to-day, to the shrine of Kalee?" The woman trembled, ai.d drew back with awe at the uttered soand of that unspeakable name. "See! see!" she cried, holding out the child at both cirms' length and quivering as she spoke. "I have brought you an offering— a votary for Kalee." The old man peered at the child incredulously. His eyes were bleared and dim with sleeplessness. Kalee's S'uine. g "But this is an English baby," he said at last, after a long pause. "What is the use of bringing it here to us? The child will serve tho gods of the Christians. Kalce needs no half-hearted votaries. The Ulaclc One is a jealous goddess indeed, visiting the neglect of the fathers on the children ; and those who serve her must serve none other." The woman gazed at him with wistful eyes. They were beautiful eyes— large, and soft, and dark, '•nd tender, "Girjee," she said slowly, "it is not true, Iknow the child can be dedicated to Kalee. Listen to me, and I will tell you why I wish to make her over to the greatest of the goddesses. She shall not serve the gods of the Christians. She is my child. I love her ! I love her ! " The fakir smiled a horrible, lean, hungry smile, "Then give her over willingly as a sacrifice to Kalee, " he an.swered dryly. The dog ceased from gnawing at the skull, and looked up in haste into the woman's eyes with eager expectation. The vulture shifted his perch uneasily. "Not that! not that" she cried, drawing back the child to her bosom in terror. "I give her lo Kalee— freely, willingly— but as a worshipper, a vo- tary, not as a sacrifice." 10 Kalee's Shrine. The fakir smiled with grim deh'ght once more. "Kaleewill have victims and not votaries," he answered in his feeble, tremulous, senile quLver. "Give her, above all, the blood of her enci-iies. One sacrifice is worth many novices." The ayah bowed down her face to the child's. "Kalee is great," she cried, kissing it hard ; "but I love the baby. She is very dear to me. I have nursed her at these breasts. She is like my own daughter. I love her better than I love Jumnee. See thes- dimples : she is smiling now. Kalee protect her ! I love her ! I love her ! " The dog returned to his bone, disappointed, once more, and licked the raw scalp all over afresh, cheated of his hope of another meal. The vulture blinked his eyes sleepily. "Girjee," the woman went on again, with trem- bhng hps, "this is why I want to make her over to Kalee. They will take her away across the great black water, away to England, to the land of the Christians, far off from her foster-mother altogether. To-day the sahib said to his wife, 'Olga shall go soon to England.' I heard. I said to myself in my heart, 'They will rob me of my child, and she will love mt no longer, and forget her foster-mother.' But if I make her over to-day to Kalee, though they Kalee's Shrine. II teach her to love the gods of the Christians, the cold white gods that stand on pedestals in the public places, she will only be theirs durino- the wakinle honor and felt he iin- is action blessed hen, the ?:, on the le whole lere en- vidently atiously 1 a very jproacli- »nscious ed with e better ttracted by flip- He went back soon to his hotel, and Mrs. Tristram's party broke up for the night. At the hotel, which lay at the south end of the town, Alan Tennant called for a brandy and soda, lit his cigar, and sat up reading a sensational novel of Gaboriau's late into the evening. He wanted to see if the smacks all got in safely ; and from time to time he rose from his chair, leaned out of his window with his elbows on the frame, and inquired from the little knot of men below how the fishermen were faring through that terrible weather. Human nature is very complex . Alan Tennant reflected somewhat remorsefully to himself that his main interest in the fishermen's fate was not for the sake of their wives and children (whom he did not know), but for the sake of Olga Trevelyan's tender conscience. " What would you have ? " he thought to himself, puffing away reflectively at his big cigar. He had never seen the worthy fisher-folk. He had seen Olga Trevelyan. The smallest headache or heartache of those whom you know — and love — he thought it deliberately — is ten thousand times worse to you, rightly or wrongly, than the bitterest griefs of the vast unknown and unnumbered multi- tude. A child's cut finger affects his mother more \h^x\ £i ft^mine in China or an cc^rthcjuake in P^ru. ■If f 7 m 40 Kalee's Shrine. ■ It must needs be so. How can you help it ? The man you do not know is an abstract idea to you ; and you can't possibly sympathize to any profound extent with a mere abstraction. By-and-by, a stir and noise on the beach below roused Alan dreamily from the terrors of Gaboriau. Something more real and serious was evidently afloat. Lights appeared on the foreshore beneath, and men were running eagerly about before him. Alan put his head out of the window and called once more : - What s up now.? Anything wrong? Smack in danger.? " "No, sir, " the coastguardsman answered with a loud shout, in a lull of the wind ; - smacks are all in, the Lord be praised ! Vessel in distress off the bar there. Seemingly collier. We're putting out life- boat. " Alan rose and looked at his watch. Gaboriau had proved too wickedly enticing. The novel was a thrilling one. It was two in the morning. He seized his hat and a light dust-coat, and hurrier'^ *-V- ' ' » • 7 _^ — —^ tis^^puL vviicrc lac vviucK nadjust Kalee's Shrine. 45 foundered so awfully, and she laughed like a maniac at the horrible catastrophe ; laughed, and laughed, and laughed again, with inextinguishable merriment, as though the sight of the drowning woman were to her unnatural soul the most amusing and delightful episode in all creation. Alan Tennant stood there spellbound. The girl in evening dress was Olga Trevelyan ! Am 46 Kalee's SJirine. \ i CHAPTER III. ■m SECOND THOUGHTS. For a minute or two he could neither move nor speak : the jar of that horrid unearthly laughter bursting upon him at so solemn a juncture had too wholly unmanned him for word or motion. His head swam. He merely steadied himself feebly with his hand on the broken windlass that stood, gaunt and rusty, upon the bare Leach, and gazed up, horror-struck, at the balcony window. Then, slowly, his senses came to him again, and his professional instinct got the better once more of his half-superstitious awe and amazement. Gabo- riau and the terrible scene before him combined must have conspired to deprive him for a moment of his wonted calmness. The weird sight had tem- porarily overcome him : but now, with a sudden effort of will, he faced and explained to himself the whole mystery. Olga, his beautiful, tender Olga— (he would call her so still !)-could never knowingly have laughed like that at so ^wful m episQde, If© Kalee's Shrine. 47 )ve nor aughter lad too n. His feebly- stood, I gazed in, and nore of Gabo- Tibined loment id tern- sudden elf the Olga- ivingly remembered at once what Norah had told him. Olga slept always with her eyes open. Clearly— clearly she was asleep now ! That must be the ex- planation of her seeming callousness. Callousness ? Nay, rather, if she were really awake, devilish ex- ultation at a fellow-creature's dying agony. He cast his eyec nervously towards the beach. Had any of the crowd observed or overheard his beautiful Olga .? Thank heaven ! No, not a soul of them anywhere ! They were all too absorbed with the incident of the wreck to think of watching Mrs. Tristram's windows. They were eagerly fol- lowing the half-overpowered lifeboat in its d'^spair- ino- struggle to return shoreward from its vain and fruitless errand of mercy. No eye or ear on earth save his own had noted in any way that appalling interlude of unconscious laughter. No living soul but himself knew anything about it; and he— he could never misunderstand or distrust in any way his beautiful Olga. He hated himself for having, even for one second, seemed to doubt her. For like a flash of lightning, at that supreme moment, the truth had forced itself with startling vividness upon Alan Tennant's wavering soul, that he was profoundly in love with Olga Trevelyan. 4« Kalee's Shrine. If I:" I He knew he loved her. He was certain he loved her. The very force and intensity of his momentary revulsion, when for one brief space of time he imagined the laughter was really wrung from her by that awful sight, in itself revealed to him the depth and reality of his new-born passion. It was long past midnight, and in those deepest hours of the waning night the heart of man knows itself with more profound intensity than ever elsewhere. Alan Tennant knew now without a shadow of doubt thrt he was desperately in love with Olga Trevelyan. He grasped his opera-glass feverishly in his hand. The last time he used it was at the theatre in Lon- don. And the opera that night— ha— it w-^s La Sonnamhula ! The coincident gave him a pregnant hint at once. Olga Trevelyan must clearly be a somnambulist ! He levelled the glass at the window once more. Olga stood gazing out tranquilly still, with spark- ling eyes, directed now at him, and now at the spot where the ship had just foundered. Already Alan had almost forgotten the terror of the wreck. His whole interest and anxiety centred now on this deadly mystery of Olga's proceedings. "My darling!" he murmured to himself, half Kalee's Shrine. 49 below his breath. "My darling! My darling! She shouldn 't expose herself at night like that, even in August ! The cold will hurt her : it will chill her blood. Shall I call them up, and tell them to wake her ? " A dark figure stood unseen behind him : hidden from his sight by the windlass on the beach. The dark figure was watching too— watching them both with a strange and half-superstitious eagerness. It was Sir Donald Mackinnon, the retired Anglo- Indian, who had brought down his yacht, and leased the Manor House at Thorborough for the season. A weird fancy seemed to chain him to the spot. He cast his eyes from Alan to Olga, and from Olga to Alan, in alternate scrutiny. Alan gazed still at the balcony window, in doubt what action he should take to recall her once more to her senses. lust at that moment, a white shape, dimly seen in the room behind, glided with noiseless feet across the floor, and putting forth a soft fair hand, with a bangle gleaming on the wrist, caught Olga's arm ju^t below the shoulder, and pulled her gently from the open balcony. A curtain screened the shape from fuller view, but Alan Tennantknew intuitively that it was irorah ijickerstetfi, 4 ill <1 50 Kalee's Shrine. With a sudden cry, Olga started in alarm and flung up her hands— flung them up, as Alan noticed half-unconsciously in the haste of the moment, exactly as the woman lashed to the wreck had flung up hers to the heavens above in her last death- throes. Sir Donald Mackinnon, unseen behind, noted the coincidence as eagerly as Alan did. There was an instantaneous flurry and excite- ment in the house, a ringing of bells and lighting of candles, as Alan judged by the glare at the upper windows ; and then the front door opened suddenly, and a man-servant, half-dressed and loosely muffled round the throat, came out in haste, as if sent at full speed in search of a doctor. "Anything the matter?" Alan cried, coming up to him hurriedly. " Miss Trevelyan's took ill, sir," the man answered with a start. "Had a fit or something. I'm going for Dr. Hazleby." "Go quickly," Alan said with an eager heart. "But it '11 be some time before you can get him up : he sleeps soundly. I 'm a medical man myself. In such an emergency, I think it would be no breach of etiquette if I were to watch Miss Trevelyan until he comes to see her. Every minute'3 precious in Kalee's Shrine. 51 cases like this. I'll go into the house at once and see her. " He walked to the door and rang the bell. Mrs. Hilary Tristram herself (in a becoming dressing- gown and mob-cap—nobody ever took Mrs. Hilary Tristram at a disadvantage) opened the door for him in much agitation. "Oh, Mr. Tennant," she cried, "I'm so glad you Ve come. What late hours you must keep, to be sure ! Naughty man : ruining your constitution. Poor Olga's had such a dreadful turn ! She was sleeping in Norah's room, as usual ; and when thov went up to bed; you know, Olga would sit up and watch the waves— she's so sentimental ! And she said perhaps the fishermen would be drowned. Poor souls ! but then, I supi>ose they 're used to it. Been accustomed to drowning all their lives, of course ; though I know it 's only once fatal. Well, Norah went to bed, like a sensible girl, and fell asleep : but Olga sat up, watching by the window, and by-and-by, as might naturally be expected, she dozed off, with her arms on the table. In time, it seems, she got up, still fast asleep,— I 'd no idea the poor child was a somnambulist,— and opened the window, and stepped on to the balcony. There she stood, catching her death of cold, heaven knows 52 Kalee's Shrine. how long, till Norah happened to wake with a start, and found her laughing, positively laughing— in her sleep, you understand— at the top of her voice too I Nora crept out and touched her with her hand, and the poor child she just sprang back, and screamed and fainted. I've sent for Dr. Hazleby, who lives quite near ; but, meanwhile, perhaps you'd like to go up yourself and see her." Alan followed her, without a word, into the room where Olga was lying on a sofa, still dressed in her evening dress, and grasping in her hand— his heart beat fast— the little bouquet he himself had given her I She was very white and cold and pallid. He felt her pulse: it beat feebly. Clearly she had just passed through some nervous crisis, which had left her weak, and weary, and flaccid. He had seen a good deal of hospital practice before an almost accidental success in a critical operation had brought him name and fame as an oculist; and he recognized at once, from Olga's condition, that the crisis must have been a very severe one. Her face was turned to the sofa-back as she lay. Alan took her head gently and reverently in his hands, and turned it towards him. As he did so he '. n Kalee's Shrine. 53 gave a little involuntary start : the eyes were staring wide and open. He knew it before. He fully expected it. And yet the sight of that vacant stare— not fixed on any- thing near or earthly, but gazing intent, with rigid pupils, as on some terrible object at an infinite distance— alarmed and appalled him in some myste- rious manner. "Olga! Olga!" he half whispered in his dis- may. Then, recollecting himself hastily, he said aloud, " Miss Trevelyan ! Miss Trevelyan ! " Olga lay as motionless as a corpse, and never turned or seem to hear him. The young man leaned over her closely and watched her face. Round her neck a little silver image hung by a silken thread ; Indian work ; he scarcely noticed it. The corners of her mouth were pinched and firm. The nostrils, still distended a little, showed signs by their tremor of recent violent passion. The eyelids hardly quivered perceptibly. The pupils were dilated and very brilliant. What made the eyelids keep unclosed? The young doctor examined them narrowly. Defective nourishment, or some accidental lesion of the nerve supplied to the elevator muscle. From what 54 Kalee's Shrine. cause? . . . Great heaven! how he started! . . . Close to the corner of either temple his quick eye detected at once a tiny scar— a very tiny scar— a long-healed cicatrix, almost invisible. Those two small marks must have been produced when Olga herself was quite a baby. The line remained, scored deep in the skin, exactly like the scar of vac- cination. They were not accidental : that much was certain. No accident on earth could possibly have severed both nerves alike on either side with such admirable dexterity. They had been cut on purpose ; and not with a knife either. Alan Tennant's quick, experienced senses recognized in a second the dis- tinctive broad-cut scar of a piece of glass or a stone implement. Steel and the metals generally cut deeper and clearer, with a fainter cicatrix. Precisely the same scars, and in precisely the same spot, as in the case of his one Thug patient ! How very strange, how more than strange, that Olga Trevelyan too, like the Thug himself, should have come from India ! However, this was no time for idle speculation. Olga was ill. Olga was in danger. Too hasty an awakening from the somnambulist state had been followed, as usual, by collapse and possible utter prostiation. Unless restoratives were applied Kalee's Shrine. 55 at once, the action of the heart might cease alto- gether. "You ought not to have waked her," he said, gen- tly, to Norah. " In future take care, when you see her Hke that, you never wake her ; or at least, only very gradually, if absolutely indispensable. The sudden recall to intermittent consciousness migh!: easily prove fatal. Brandy at once, please ; brandy and sal- volatile." They brought them in haste, and Alan poured a glassful quickly down the poor girl's throat. After a little while she revived somewhat, and feebly held up the faded flowers. **0h, Norah 1 " she murmured, half below her breath, her eyes meanwhile coming back to earth with a gradual return from the abysses of infinity ; ''I've had such a terrible, terrible dream. . . . A ghastly dream ! ... but I am sure I don't know what on earth it was about. ... I was laughing, laughing, laughing so hard. ... I can't remember most of my dream, but just the end. I thought " and she looked at the flowers dreamily; *' I thought I saw Mr. Alan Tennant." Alan's heart leaped up in his breast. It was too terrible ... or too delightful. Had she really 56 Kalee's Shrine. seen him with her staring; wide eyes ? Then if so, she must have seen, too, that awful episode. Or had she merely been dreaming a maiden's dream about him ? Then if so, at that his very heart within him was reverently silent. He dropped the hand whose pulse he was slowly counting, and glided from the room, unseen by Olga. He could never let her know he had possibly surprised even so much (if anything) of her heart's vague imaginings. It would be cruel and unfair to her— a mean advantage. He beckoned Norah and Mrs. Tristram silently from the room. They left Olga for the minute in charge of the servants. "I'll go below till Dr. Hazleby comes," he said, "in case I should be needed. Meanwhile, go on giving her the brandy frequently. But don't let her know I 've seen her at all. Poor child ! it might make her feel awkward with me afterward." Norah smiled a knowing little smile. " Very well," she said, with a meaning look. "We can keep our own counsel, you may be sure, Mr. Ten- nant. . . . But how strange you should happen to be so near at hand just at the very moment when dear Olga wanted you ! Quite in the Romeo and Juliet style, you know. A serenade by midnight— without the music. It strikes me, Mr. Tennant, I: Kalee's Shrine. 57 you must have been taking a moonlight stroll very late right under Olga's window too, lor a wonder ! " ^^ Alan drew himself up shortly. " I was out, he said - watching the lifeboat, which had just put off to assist a wreck. The wreck went down exactly opposite your aunt's windows. It was a terrible sight, indeed, Miss Bickersteth ; the most terrible, save 'one, I ever beheld in all my life. . . . Miss Trevelyan is in a very excited and nervous condi- tion. She 's a voung lady whose nerves should not be overwrought. If possible, keep the facts about the wreck from her. In her present state, I 'm afraid they might do her serious injury." " He's very much in love," Norah whispered to her aunt as they went back to the sick-room again. - He doesn't like to be teased about her. When a man doesn't like to be teased about a pretty girl, you may be fairly sure there 's something serious in it. Alan slipped down to the dimly-lighted drawing- room, and waiting there patiently till Dr. Hazleby arrived, briefly explained what he had seen and heard, and waited for his final verdict. In a few minutes Dr. Hazleby came down again, with his ; 58 Kalee's Shrine. heavy tread resounding on the staircase, and reported the patient as distinctly better. ** She doesn't know you've seen her, I gather," he said brusquely. **No," Alan aswered with some hesitation. *^ " Alan said, distractedly, gazing at the long fl.nt banks of unrelieved mud on either hand, shining iridescent in tlie broad sunlight. "There's a vast wealth of undiscovered beauty for the true artist in common mud. It lights up won- derfully now into cloth ofgold and Tyrian purple. I saw Wyllie make an exquisite sketch of these very flats when I was boating here last summer. Do you think, Miss Trevelyan, you could ever paint them? " "No," Olga answered, gazing at the glistening expanse dreamily. "It would 'ake a great colorist to do it full justice. You're quite right. Sir Donald. It's really beautiful." She turned her face up to him as she spoke, in the full glare of the August sun ; and the old Indian, looking gently down at her, smiled with delight like a child for a moment at discovering that so intelli- gent and discerning a sense had been read by them both into his casual observation. It 's so delightful to find you've made a brilliant remark without even yourself either knowing it or meaning it ! The old man was pleased and gratified. Next instant, some- thing unusual in Olga's face seemed strangely to attract and rivet his attention. He gazed at her Kalee's Shrine. n closely, almost rudely, till Olga drew back a little abashed from his wondering stare. Then he gave a sudden backward jerk of his head muttered some- thing inaudible l^elow his mustache to himself, and remained silent for a few seconds. At last he spoke: ''You were born in adia, I believe, my dear," he said, not unkindly. But Olga evidently resented his manner. "I was, Sir Donald," she answered with some cu ness. **H'm," he rep ated. "Born in India ! Curious ! Curious ! One hardly ui lerstands it. Bu^ queer things will turn up sometimes. Queer '^^ace, India, Queer events often happen there. I knev\ } our father, when I was in the service, my dear. Very odd thing happened to me once, in a district where your father was then stationed " "Indeed!" Olga said with quiet dignity. She did not seem anxious to pursue the subject. "Yes, Mr. Tennant," Sir Donald wem op turn- ing round to the young doctor in his auAiety for a listener. ' ' It must have been when this young lady here was in th nursery, I suppose ; T came across one of the last remnants of that abominable Thug- gee." "I thought it was all put an end to long ago," Alan said with a suppressed yawn. idt I'ln if; m 78 Kalee's Shrine. "Put an end to? Not a bit of it!" Sir Donald responded. "It lived on spasmodically till very lately. Why, in the IJenjral famine of '66, \u a temple of Kalee, only 150 miles np country from Calcutta, we found a boy vvitli his throat cut; tiie eyes starln<,r vvide open ; and tho clotted tongue thrust out between the teeth :— a very horrible sight, I promise you. And in your fathers district, my dear, in your father's district, when you were a baby almost, I came upon one very serious case of Thug- gee. I had sat on the Thuggee commission, you know— helped to stamp tlie wliole thing out— and so, of course, I knew all about it. Horrid prac- tice that of the Thugs. They used to catch wayfar- ing victims, entice them to dine and then to sleep, —drugged, no doubt,— strangle them with a hand- kerchief as they slept on the ground, and offer up their blood to their goddess Kalee. But we stamped it out, stamped it out at last, sir, entirely. Benefi- cent rule of the British Government stamped out Suttee, stamped out infanticide, stamped out Thug- gee, stamped out everything." "Except famine," Alan said, smiling. He was anxious now to divert the conversation ; for he could see that Olga, in spite of an affected air of nonchal- ance, was eagerly drinking in the whole conversa- Kalee's Shrine. 79 tion, and he dreaded the effect upon her nervous constitution of so exciting a ruhject. He took, as he fancied, a sort of paternal interest in her. "Except famine, to be sure," the ohl An<;lo-Indian answered good-humorcdly, refusing to follow the red rag so industriously trailed across the track of conversation. " Of course, we can't expect to put down famine. We 're not answerable if the monsoon doesn't burst at the time it ought to do. Well, as T was telling you, I came across the last relic of Thug- gee in the very district where this young lady — at the age of four, I suppose — was then residing. In the midst of a jungle, a dense jungle, as impassable as a cactus thicket, we found a httle dirty squalid temple — Thugs, if you please — all covered with blood, after their nasty fashion : and a lean old wretch of a fakir inside, squatting on his haunches, huddled in his rags, and actually taken in the very act of cutting up a dead body. I give you my word of honor for it, my dear young lady, with a flint knife, cutting up and mutilating a dead body." Sir Donald paused and wiped his glasses signifi- cantly. Olga shuddered visibly as he gazed hard at her. ** And what became of the old man ? " she asked. BMUmMliiiMV^ So hlili I Kalee's Shri ne. looking up in his face oni more with a strange interest. "Oh, the old man! Hanged him, of course- hanged him : hanged him. He was caught red- handed, and we naturally hanged him. Girjee was the old wretch's name, I remember. Died hard with the rope round his neck, cursing us all in the name of Kalee, and predicting all sorts of hideous vengeance in the future against us. Gave your father quite a turn, the old fellow was so perfectly sure Kalee would avenge his execution on Sir Ever- ard himself and h^s children's children." "It was very dreadful," Olga said shuddering "My dear," the old Indian asked, turning sud- denly upon her, " do you happen to speak any Hindastani?" "I did once," Olga answered, with a faint blush, "but I ve forgotten it all ages ago. Only, some' tmies in my sleep, a little of it seems still to come back faintly to me." He looked her hard in the face with a critical gaze. Olga shrank half alarmed from his inquiring- eyes. ^ "H'm?" he said again, glancing casually at her neck. "What's that you've got there.? Eh? Tell me ! A piece of Indian silver-work, isn't it ? " \i ; Kalee's Shrine. 8i "Yes," Olga replied, fingering the image nerv- ously. "A present from my old ayah at Moozuff- ernugger. I wear it always, I 'm sure I don't know why. I 've grown accustomed to it. It's a sort of sentiment." Just then, to Alan's unspeakable relief, Norah ran up to take her friend aft and consult her on some small point being eagerly debated by a little crowd in Sir Donald's cabin. "A pretty girl," Sir Donald muttered confiden- tially to Alan, "but, by Jove,, sir, I wouldn't take ten thousand pounds to be the man that marries her ! " "Perhaps not," Alan said sLortly. " But happily you're not called upon to make the effort, and I don't thiuK she'll have much difficulty in getting a husband in due time without offering such an extra- vagant figure." " Ah, I dare say the fellow who marries her wouldn't find her out all at once : but he 'd soon discover what was the matter after it was too late, I'm thinking, Mr. Tennant." " Love is blind," Alan said oracularly. "Aye, but marriage is just like yourself, — a great oculist," the old Anglo-Indian retorted laughing, Alan answered nothing. He merely glanced 6 Iff ^ ' i\ I nil I I) & f I 82 Kalee's Shrine. after Olga's retreating figure with some little trepi- dation. Everything that in any way disturbed her mind was now to him a subject for sincere regret. " She looks to me too beautiful and good to hnve anything on earth but goodness within her," he said at last, half thinking aloud. Sir Donald started. "Eh," he said : "That's the way the wind blows, is it, then, Mr. Tennant? Take care what you do. You don't mean to say, young man, you're going yourself to marry that wild young lassie there, are you ! " "If I were," Alan answered evasively with quiet dignity, "it is probable I would take the young lady herself before anybody else into my confidence." He walked aft to join Norah and Olga. As he reached their group, Norah was just remarking some- thing in a slight undertone about their excellent host. "Oh, yes, he 's a dear old man in his own way," she said smilingly ; -but like all Highlanders, you know, he's terribly superstitious." Kalee's Shrine. 83 ^fil ■ I CHAPTER VI. ! i;i| THE HERO EMERGES. After lunch, the yacht had to wait two hours for the tide to serve before she could make her way back again in safety down the shrunken channel. The river Thore, which debouches into the sea at Thorborough (good word, debouches : you will find it in the guide-book), is one of those sluggish tidal East Anglian rivers which meander along, with infitiitc twists and turns, for miles together through two inimitable boundary plains of festering mud- l)ank. At high tide, the estuary hlls from side to side, and >x>ks like a splendid widespread lake : at low wat^, H father resembles a vast desert of unutterable slush, with a narrow thread of river trickling slowly down a hollow in its centre. Land- ing is impossible on either shore : deep banks of slime and ooze intercept your passage in every direction. You can only keep to the mid-channel, and wait till you come to the rare quays where an artificial landing-place has been duly provided by human means tor your special convenience. Ml 84 Kalee's Shrine. i;i i i II The afternoon seemed rather tame as they lay at anchor : so the two row-boats of the yacht were put under requisition, and most of the party went off together, rowed by the attendants, down the side streamlets. The big gig, manned by the two sailors, the footmen, and some of the young men, turned off in one direction to put up the herons on the great mud flats : in the smaller boat, Norah and her brother went with a couple of others to explore the water that ran down a tributary channel from the neighboring paper mills. Olga complained of a lit- tle headache— the sun and the water, she said : and she stayed behind. Alan (oddly enough) preferred to stop with her. In a little while, they were left to themselves, not without the guilty connivance, it is to be feared, of Mrs. Hilary Tristram, wdio en- gaged Sir Donald and Lady Mackinnon in an elderly gossip all by themselves beside the companion ladder. Olga and Alan leaned over the gunwale and talked their own talk confidentially alone, leav- ing the respected seniors to their private re- sources. "Yes," Mrs. Hilary Tristram said, with a confess- ing smile, in answer to some casual remark of Sir Donald's: "I know I am. I admit the impeach- Kalee's Shrine. 8; ment. It 's so pleasant to make young people happy. The difficulty is, nowadays, how to do it. There are so many good girls, and nice girls, and pretty girls, and clever girls, all over England, waiting to be married, and never a man anywhere to marry them. Where are the men ? All gone abroad — in the Army, in the Navy, in India, in the Colonies — wood-cutting in Canada, sheep-farming in New Zea- land, tea-planting in Assam, sugar-boiling in Jamai- ca, — doing anything and everything on earth but what they ought to be — making love at their ease to the nice girls here at home in England. And the consequence is, the nice girls are left alone by them- selves disconsolate. I really wish I could introduce a Universal British Empire Telephonic Matrimonial Agency, to bring the young people everywhere to- gether. But as I can't, I 'm reduced to the sad neces- sity of inviting the miserable remnant of the men to meet the whole host of nice girls at dinners and dances." "You're a benefactor of humanity," Lady Mac- kinnon answered with a nod. "Or ought the right words to be benefactress of femininity? " ** I 'm not so sure about the young couple by the gunwale over yonder," Sir Donald interrupted, with a mysterious shake of his sagacious head. "I'm I k 'A 1 's a i An 'I If 1 1 ! f i^i t 4 'flIHHD *^^B^K -^HHH I 86 Kalee's Shrine. ) not so sure of your benefaction there, do you know, Mrs. Tristram." "Not so sure of Mr. Tennant, Sir Donald ! " Mrs. Tristram cried, bridling up at once and arching her eyebrows suddenly. "Oh, I assure you, he 's a most charming young man, and so well principled too." (Ladies of Mrs. Tristram's age, it may be parenthetically observed, invariably attach a pro- found importance to those mystic entities known as Principles.) " He 'd be a most eligible husband for any good girl : I can't allow you to say a single word against my ]\lr. Tennant." '*It wasn't of Jiim I was thinking, thank you," Sir Donald muttered dryly. " It wasn't of him. It was of the young lady." " What } Olga ! My dear Sir Donald, you must really excuse me, but Olga's one of my most par- ticular favorites. The only doubt I had on my mind was whether my Mr. Tennant, nice as he is, was quite nice enough for dear Olga. I hesitated as to whether I ought to permit the young people to be thrown so very much together." Sir Donald shrugged his shoulders slightly : that was a Celtic-Scotch trick which his Indian experi- ences had rather strengthened than otherwise. "It's none of my business, I'm sure, my dear I' Jill 15 Kalee's Shrine. 87 It madam," he said shortly: "but you know I'm a Scotchman, and we Scotch are a trifle eerie. I have a wee bit of the second sight about me, myself; and 1 don't just like that young lady's eyes. I've seen something like them in India. . . No, no : I 'm not going to tell you, for you'd only laugh at me : but I know this much, that if I were a young man I 'd think twice before I put my fate, for better for worse, into such hands as Miss Olga Trevelyan's. She 's a friend of yours, and I '11 say naught aganist her : but if second sight counts for anything nowadays, I tell you there 's mischief brewing ahead for Mr. Alan Tennant." ]\Irs. Hilary Tristram traced a circle uneasily with her parasol on the deck. "I've had the good fortune to be born south of the Tweed, Sir Donald," she said at last, after an awkward pause, "so the second sight doesn't great- ly trouble me." But it did trouble her, for all that. Being a wo- man, and therefore impressionable, the mere sug- gestion of misfortune affected her happiness. She spent a sleepless night that memorable Wednesday, thinking over in her own soul by herself all possible evils that could ever be supposed to overshadow in the future Olga Trevelyan and Alan Tennant. Per- -''Mil i ss m Kalee's Shrine, haps Sir Everard M'ould be ve-y angry, and then what a dreadful fuss she would gee into for having encouraged this unfortunate love affair. The more she thought about it, the more nervous she grew. It 's an awful thing to undertake the ro/e of earthly providence to two aspiring ana grateful young lives ! Never suggest ill omens to a woman. You are raising more ghosts than all your philosophy can ever exorcise. Meanwhile, Alan and Olga stood by the gunwale, looking over into the deep clear central stream that moved unsuUied between its muddy banks, like a good woman in this wicked world of ours. The boat in which Norah and her party had taken their departure was winding its way slowly up a narrow channel, towards the low bridge some two miles beyond the paper mill. Norah s bright crim- son parasol, held open behind her head, made a capital mark to track their course by. Even when the boat itself lay half hidden by the tall mud banks, that brilliant patch of sunlit color sufficed to reveal at once their exact progress up the tributary channel. *' Take my glass," Alan said, handing it to Olga. Kalee's Shrine. 89 "One can sec the whole course of the stream with it up as far as the paper mill, spread out just like a map from the deck here before us. How it twists and turns as it crawls along ! I went up there wild- fowl shooting, 1 remember, last summer." ''I'm sorry you shoot," Olga said, turning her deep brown eyes full upon him. ' ' I suppose it s very girlish and all that of me, but I hate bloodshed — even an animal's. Members of a great humane profession like yours, whose very mission it is to alleviate pain, ought surely to amuse themselves with something nobler and better than going wild- fowl shooting." "You are right," Alan answered, converted in a moment from the error of his ways by the tender light in those beautiful eyes of hers. "Forgive the past. In future, Miss Trevelyan, I shall never handle a gun again," There was a short pause, during which a few distinct words were wafted over towards them from the region of the quarter-deck. "The Hindus," Sir Donald was saying in a loud voice, so loud that it broke in for a moment on the young people's colloquy, "will never willingly injure any living creature, especially cows, bulls, or oxen. It 's part of their religion. A confoundedly 90 Kalee's Shrine. I queer religion, I always thought it. Odd that the people who won't eat beefsteak or tread upon a cockroach should have invented the custom of burn- ing their widows, practised infanticide, and winked at the abominable atrocities of Thuggee ! " "Sir Donald has really Thugs on the brain, "Olga murmured smiling. " I Ve never yet once met him that he hasn't gone back over and over again to that same old subject. Where have they got to now, I wonder, Mr. Tennant.? Can you see Norah any- where ? " **0h, yes. There's Miss Bickersteth's parasol by the beacon yonder. I 've been watching it all the way along the stream ever since they started." 'Tm so glad, Mr. Tennant," Olga said with meaning. " She's a dear little soul, and she 's well worth watching." Alan Tennant felt a faint blush rise to his cheek, but he said nothing. Clearly, Olga was on the wrong tack : but the present moment, with Lady Mackinnon's eyeglass fixed stonily upon them, was not exactly the best opportunity for a candid ex- planation. ** They 're getting to the bridge now," he said carelessly. "It's a nasty bridge, that: too low m Kalee's Shrine. 9: aln v-r a boat to get under. The . . . thedick- boa 'v'ou know — i allu(i merely to the sins of the past .)y way of .^lus iti' :he duck-boat could jjst manag-e to escape , lut 1 don't suppose Miss Bickersteth's craft can possibly clear it. Lend me theglass; mo. ent, please. Thanks. . . . Ah, yes : the water's somewhat lower than usual to-day. They can just get under. . . . Why, now they're stopping half-way throu' ^\ the bridge. ]\Iiss Bicker- steth's putting out a mie, I fancy. Excuse me. Miss Trevelyan, if I trample again on your tenderest feelings, but I really think — yes, 1 m quite sure — she's going to do a little fishing." Olga laughed. "I'm afraid I 'm not quite true there, " she said, ' * to ni)^ own principles. You mustn't expect consistency in a woman. I confess I don't somehow feel as if fishing was really quite so bad as shooting. I wouldn't fish myself, of course, because I wouldn't willingly give pain to any living creature ; but I don't feel called upon to be angry with dear Norah if she chooses to do it. For one thing, the fish don't seem quite so much alive, you know, as pheasants and partridges. I don't think they can feel anything like so keenly. And then, besides, one doesn't actually shed their blood, you see : they only choke and die, I suppose, poor creatures." Ml n y% ^r r ^. IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I 1.25 ^ m 5 m 2.2 2.0 18 M. 111.6 % PhoiDgi^phic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, NY. 14580 (716) 872-4S03 m rtV iV # -<^v> c^* rk»Ml so hanl at i>ultinj^ hvv into the comatose condition tluat I can't tor the life of nje now i^-et her out of it ai^iin. I'm faint, faint: I have h)st power. I went too far. Ihandy, brandy, (luick ! l>rinj;' me some brandy ! lie sank upon a couch, with Ids arms fohied Hst- lessly in tront (^f 1dm. 'I'hey broui^ht the brandy, and he pouii'd himsiMf out a bij;- wine<;lassful, which he t(^ssed otf neat without a moment's hesitation. Then he waited and fanned himself with his hand- kiMchief a little. At last, as the spirit j^avc him fresh streni^th, he n^-^e slowly, and once nu)re con- frt)nted that immovable statue, standing cold ami white with the untwisted hamlkerchief hang-ing- h)osely ncnv from the i>alliil lini^crs. A few more passes undid the spell. 01s.;a gave a great start — a short sharp cry — and woke up suddenly with a terrible awakening. Her eyes came back at once to measurable space from the remote distance. The expression of concentrated deteiriunation and fero- city in her I'lxed features gave way first to one of pure bewiUlerment and next to another of unspeak- able shamefaced horror. She gazed around her in awe for a moment as if barely conscious of her pres- ent surroundings : then, with the one word " Kalec " bursting painfully from Jier blanched lips, she Kalcc's Siiriiic. 127 drnpj)C(l llio hamlkcrcliief in a frenzy of shame, and darted, conscientx'-slricken, liastily from the room. Mrs. Tristram made a sij^n with her liand to one of the elder ^'uIh. 'I'iie ^^rl understood anil liurriedly followed her. The mesmerist, with a smile of self-conscious triumph on liis inexpressive face, glanced round for applause at the attentive company. Nobody ap- plauded. It was all too life-like, too vivid, too ter- rible. The line which separates illusion from fact had been overstepped. The suggested tragedy came too near a real one. Mr. Keen, baffled of his expected applause, moved over quietly to the still smiling Norah. He waved his hands once or twice before her, and she woke forthwith, breathing hard and deep, in a weary fashion. "What did you think you felt ? " Sir Donald asked, coming mysteriously with a whisper to her side. ' "I don't exactly remember," Norah answered with a sigh. "I feel so awfully dreamy still. I don't like it I wish I hadn't allowed Mr. Keen to mesmerize me. But I think I fancied I was some- where in India, in a sort of jungle— I don't know what — but something or other terrible was going to happen. . , , It wasn't snakes and it wasn't k fcl 128 Kalee's Shrine. ; j 1 ( i {F hi tigers. . . . There was a woman ... a black woman ... a tall black woman — with awful eyes " She broke off suddenly. "Give me a glass of wine," she cried in a pained ^oice. " I can't bear to think any more about it" Kalee's Shrine. 129 CHAPTER IX. LOWERING CLOUDS. Sir Donald turned and walked into the garden. His brow was hot, and liis fancy fired. He paced the lawn quickly and excitedly The mesmerist stepped with a dejected air in long strides beside him. "Keen," the old Indian cried at last, "I don't half like the look of it. This is not all right. I 'm superstitious, I know, but I don't care a straw what you call me in that matter. Did you see yourself what the girl was doing? She was noosing that kerchief, regular Thug fashion, to strangle Norah Bickersteth I " The mesmerist bit his lip reflectively. "Never saw such an unappreciative audience in all my life," he said in a testy voice. - They might have given me a round with their hands at least. It 's the best bit of mesmerism I ever did in my born days. The girl's acting was simply magnificent ! " "Acting!" Sir Donald echoed contemptuously. N ! I Hi 130 Kalee's Shrine. "It wasn't acting! It was sheer reality! The lassie s a Thug ! She 's been dedicated to Kalee ! " Mr. Keen glanced curiously sideways at his companion. Scotchmen have certainly got some queer ideas of their own. Besides, tlic old fellow had obviously appreciated Mrs. Hilary Tristram's excellent cognac. Drunk or mad, one or the other ! The mesmerist marvelled, and said nothing. Presently Sir Donald spoke again. He clutched his friend's arm in the shadow of the lilac bushes. "Keen," he said, " I want to tell you something. I knew Everard Trevelyan well in India. He had but two children, this girl Olga, and a boy called Theodore. . . . Now, listen to me, and don't make light of it. It's a deuced odd fact, Keen, but it 's true for all that, what I *m going to tell you. As I stood there and watched her just this minute, a picture rose distinctly before my eyes — a picture I'd clean forgotten for years— picture of Everard Trevelyan's bungalow at Moozuffernugger. The boy was lying dead in his cot— her little brother- two days before she came away from India. There was a mystery about it, never cleared up. Some said the bearer, and some the ayah ; but anyhow the thing was very remarkable. The child had a dark blue line traced right around his throat, and his Kalee's Shrine. 131 eyes and tongue protruded horribly, for all the world as if he 'd been suffocated. One would say, a hand- kerchief tied about his neck. They never discovered how it happened. Nobody could be convicted of it. . . . They never thought of his little sister. . . . Deuced odd, I call it, Keen, don't you, really ? " The mesmerist looked at him with glassy eyes. "Re-markably odd," he said in a careless voice. •* Re-markably. Re-markably." Sir Donald took another turn and muttered half to himself— it was clear his companion was wholly unsympathetic— "Suspicion never pointed to any- one. Ayah, desperately fond of the children, wept like a child when Olga was taken from her. . And yet it 's certainly very odd. The girl seemed guileless and simple enough. . . . But who can tell.? Kalee's emissaries go forth unconscious in their deep sleep. Depend upon it, there's some- thing in it, there's something in it." He j)aced the lawn once more feverishly : then he spoke again : " I remember well when the news was broken to her ! She cred as if her little heart v/ould burst. Poor little soul, I can see her this minute ! . . . It's very strange. I don't half like the look of it." I M I H nU 132 Kalee's Shrine. ^ i ihi ji ill The mesmerist turned and stared him in the face. "My dear Mackinnon," he said testily, "you 're talking an awful lot of pure rubbish. Mes merism 's a very powerful agency. It brought back forgotten old Indian reminiscences to the girl's mind: stirred the inmost chords and fibres of her most in- timate nature : set her even speaking her outlandish lingo, in which you and she can jabber together so glibly. She must have heard some Indian servant, who was about her as a child, talk much of the Thugs, or whatever you call them : and that set her excited fancy working, and made her go off at once on the Thug hallucination. Believe me, you underestimate the power of mesmerism." Sir Donald only looked up meditatively at the stars. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio;" he muttered in aslow drawl, " than are dreamed of in your philosophy." ''f Meanwhile, Olga, in her own room, had been joined by Norah, who came up pale and trembling to inquire for her. "What has made you ill, darling?" the younger girl asked her tenderly, throwing her soft arm in a caressing attitude round her friend's neck. Olga drew back instinctively from her touch. (( Kalee's Shrine. Oh, don't put your hand on me, don't 133 come near me, Norah," she cried in alarm. "I don't know what 's the matter with me to-night. 1 don 't feel a bit like myself at all. I seem to be so wicked, so terribly wicked. You mustn't touch me ! " "Fou wicked, dariing!" Norah echoed, kissing her. "You're not wicked. You could never be wicked. You 're just a saint ; that 's what I call you Olga." Olga brushed away a rising tear. "I can't understand it at all, Norah pet," she said dreamily. " For the very first time in all my life, I seemed half conscious in my sleep just now of my own actions. I wish— I wish to goodness they hadn't mesmerized me." Norah drew back with a sudden look of alarm. " Mesmerized you, Olga?" she cried in much sur- prise. "You don't mean to say you let them mesmerize you.? Why, Mr. Tennant begged me not to allow them. I wouldn't have let them if only I 'd been awake myself and known all about it." "But they did," Olga answered, "and I seemed to be dimly aware all the time I was asleep of what I was doing. And when I awoke— oh, it was too horrible ! . . . Norah, Norah, [M Hi .. ^^4. ,_ / F CI, my ^MjMBBfc liaiiWi ■■■«»'M u 134 Kalee's Shrine. I*' (ft Or in darling, don't, don't come near me ! I beg of you. I implore you." "Why, Olga, why?" "Oh, Norah, darling, as I stood there in the draw- ing-room, waking yet sleeping,— I'm afraid to tell you, — I seemed to be aware of some awful being, bloodthirsty, pitiless, black, invisible, floating in front of me, under whose orders I acted without hope of resistance. I saw her before me with my bodily eyes, and I heard her speak to me in some strange language. I had to obey whatever she told me : I had to obey her, though I hated and detested it. I don't know what it all meant, my darling, but I feel as if I was terribly, terribly wicked. . . And what's worst and most awful of all, Norah, I feel, now with my quickened senses, as if that terrible being had always, always been quite familiar to me." Norah soothed her neck with one hand, and pressed her fingers tenderly with the other, but answered nothing. Ths terrified girl laid her face gently on her friend's shoulder and sobbed away her grief for some moments in silence. Then she raised her head once more and murmured, " And Alan didn't want me to be mesmerized ! I've disobeyed Alan Kalee's Shrine. 135 without knowing it ! Where's Alan ? Has he come back yet ? '" "No," Norah answered. " Harry and he haven't returned. They '11 be back soon. Don't worry, darling. Oh, I wish to goodness you hadn't been mesmerized." "Not comeback," Olga cried in alarm. "Oh, he's lost! he's lost! Norah! Norah! I saw her smiling, smiling horribly. I remember the smile ! It means evil ! She always smiles like that, I know, when she sees death or misfortune happen to any one. It was a ghastly smile— so fiendish and exultant. Oh, Norah, Norah, it makes me faint even to think of her." "Of whom.? of whom.?" Norah cried in horror. "I don't know. I can't say, my darling. I can't remember her right name this minute; but I saw her just now ! I saw her I I saw her ! . . . He 's dead ! He 's dead ! I 'm perfectly sure he is ! I know that smile ! Oh, Norah, Norah, her smile is so deadly ! " She flung herself down at full length on the couch, buried her face between her outstretched palms, and cried to herself long and silently. At last she lifted her head once more. **And i lift «l 136 Kalee's Shrine. I didn't finish doing what she bid me ! " she cried in anguish. "It was very wrong of me ! I left off in the midst ! I ought to have finished doing what she bid me 1 " ;| I Hi Kalee's Shrine. 137 CHAPTER X. THE STORM BURSTS. The party in the drawing-room had broken up rather suddenly. Everybody felt, in a certain dim instinctive fashion, there was something uncanny about this mesmerizing business. Sir Donald and Mr. Keen were idly pacing the lawn outside to- gether : Norah and Olga had retired to the obscurity of their own bedroom. Conversation languished. Mrs. Hilary Tristram tried in vain the recuperative effect of a little music. One of the guests sat down to the piano, and touching the keys lightly de- clared in a loud soprano voice she was *'a happy haymaker. " Nobody took the slightest notice of the romantic and obviously inopportune declaration. The elder men suggested cards: but the younger (as usual) all disclaimed the most elementary knowl- edge of the game of whist, and sidled off moodily in little knots into remote corners. It was clear the harmony of the evening had been quite spoilt. That unfortunate mesmerizing had totally upset the ! 1 I 'J ')' -^^1 11 III «iM^H ■: i II 138 Kalee's Shrine. delicate nerves of the assembled company. Mrs, Hilary Tristram, best and ablest of hostesses, re- linquished the position at last as hopeless. Retreat- ing gracefully, she subsided of herself into an easy- chair, and assumed the attitude of one r , ,■; >olly indisposed at an early hour to speed the ^^arting guest with a glass of seltzer and a friendly valedic- tion. The guests for their part soon interpreted the lan- guid attitude of their hostess aright. One after an- other dropped off rapidly, with mechanical thanks, as they bowed themselves out for a very pleasant and interesting evening. ''Deuced slow," the men murmured one to the other, as they lit their cigars from borrowed lights outside the front porch. " That mesmerizing rubbish simply spoilt the whole evening. Hard lines on those two poor girls, too, to go trying their constitutions in that stupid fashion! Quite surprised at it, for my part, in a sensible, amiable woman of the world like Mrs. Hilary Tris- tram. " Before the last guests had muttered their farewells, Norah glided softly into the room once more for a brief moment, and whispered something in her aunt's ear. Mrs. Tristram motioned back Dr. Hazleby to a chair with her hand. Kalee's Shrine. 139 *'I want to speak with you," she said in alow voice as he took his seat again. "Norah and Olga may wish to consult you." Dr. Hazleby sat back and waited for the other guests to go. His conscience smote him for having permitted the mesmerist to ''carry this wretched nonsense so far with Miss Trevelyan." In his heart of hearts, he was fain to confess to himself, .vith a tinge of self-contempt for the avowal, that there was "something in it." So there was. More than he imagined. Presently Mrs. Tristram ran upstairs, and soon came down again, looking very agitated. " Poor dear Olga seems dreadfully hysterical," she said with sigh. "She doesn't look yet as if she 'd quite got over that horrid mesmerism. I ought never to have allowed the man to work upon her feelings so. She s talking in a rambling, delirious sort of way, poor dear, about somebody having compelled her against her will to do something or other that she thinlcs dreadfully wicked. And she says there's someone or other smiHng horribly at her. Don't you think Dr. Hazleby, just to quiet her nerves, you ought to give her something? " Ladies, even learned ladies like Mrs. Tristram, regard medical science as a form of magic, and H ••; '; - 1 i ' ; 1 V ]• : 1 1 [ ! ! i i I i i|' ^'l i i -i. H. fwml 140 Kalee's Shrine. m ■ If' drugs as a sort of charm or fetish. Their universal remedy for all the ills that female flesh is heir to, from paralysis or heart disease down to fainting or hysteria, is to "give her something." What, is immaterial. Morphia or sal-volatile, strychnine and arsenic or eau sucree tempered with orange flower water : a drug, a drug, in the name of all that 's merciful. Dr. Hazleby went up at once to see the interest- ing patients. Olga's pupils were very dilated. Her pulse was slow, yet bounding and unnatural. She seemed in a very marked state of exhaustion and excitement. " Don't you think, young ladies, "he said cheerily, ''you ought each to have a glass of port wine, just to set you up, now ? " Olga assented readily enough, and the good doc- tor went down in his clumsy, hearty way, himself, to fetch it. - Wait a bit," he said in a stage aside' as Mrs. Tristram poured it out from the decanter. "I'll just run home and get a wee drop of some- thing stronger— something to quiet the nerves, you know. Miss Trevelyan seems to have something weighing on her mind. Your nephew and Mr. Ten- nant haven't come in yet from the river, I fancy.' "No," Mrs. Tristram answered. " Thev wpnf i It is , Kalee's Shrine. 141 up the river this afternoon in the duck-boat. I 'm beginning to get a little nervous about them my- self, to tell you the truth, my dear Dr. Hazleby." "Oh, they '11 be all right, ma'am," the doctor re- plied, with gruff kindliness. "Young men are al- ways getting into scrapes, and frightening their friends, and then turning up again. Depend upon it, that 's what 's the matter with MissTrevelyan. She won't sleep a single wink to-night if she doesn't have something to quiet her nerves a bit." And he ran hastily out of the door, to his own sur- gery just round the next corner. When he came back, he brought a little phial loose in his hand, and poured a few drops of a sweet white fluid from it into each of the glasses. It was the same white fluid the fakir had taken from his double gourd and smeared on Olga's lips the day she was first dedicated to Kalee ! *'What is it? " Mrs. Tristram ventured timidly to ask. "What is it? Oh, haschish." "And pray what's haschish ? " " Haschish ? Why, haschish is Indian hemp. You know the stuff-— a common drug. It 's a pow- erful narcotic. The Hindu ascetics use it to produce illusions. I always find it a capital soothing draught 142 Kalee's Shrine. J i Ki for nervous excitement. I 've frequently given it with the very best results in similar cases." He took the glasses up on a little tray. Olga was sitting still on the couch, with her head between her hands, and her bosom heaving and falling visi- bly. "Has— Harry Bickersteth come back yet?" she asked with eager haste. The doctor nodded a sagacious nod to Mrs. Hilary Tristram. "I told you so." the nod seemed visibly to say. "She s troubling her head about young Alan Ten- nant." "No, they 've not come back yet," he answered cheerily, handing her the glass, *'but they're ex- pected home now every minute. There 's no dan- ger : not the slightest danger. Tide was late, owing to the surf on the bar. They '11 be back immediately. Here, drink the port. It 's very good for you." Olga took it and drained it off mechanically. Then she buried her head once more in the sofa cushion. "Come, come," the doctor said, with kindly in- sistence. "This won't do, my dear young lady. You must both get to bed now, this very minute. It's high time you two were fast asleep and snoring. Young people need plenty of beauty-sleep. Miss Norah, see thai your friend goes to bed at once, and Kalee's Shrine. M3 doesn't He awake cryincr. And you too. Vou shall hear about your brother and Mr. 7'ennant the very first thing when you wake in the morning." Mrs. Hilary Tristram sat up very late by herself that evening, wondering when her nephew would ever come back, and full of dim unshaped forebod- ings about him. She wished she hadn't let him go out on the river with Mr. Alan Tennant. What was that Sir Donald had said the day of the picnic about the second sight, and misfortune brewing for the young oculist.? She didn't believe in the second sight ; but still, one can't uclp feeling just a little bit nervous. Duck-boats, she knew, were fearfully un- safe, and the branches of the Thore were always shifty. She sat up alone till long past two, watch- ing and waiting eagerly for Harry's arrival. But no Harry came at last, and she was fain in the end to take up her candlestick with a sinking heart, and mount the lonely staircase tremulously to her own bedroom. As she passed by Olga's and Norah's door, she heard the sound of a voice or voices. Those naughty girls hadn't fallen asleep yet ! They were still talk- ing. Had they too waited and watched v.^ there ( i ! I i i I ;' 144 Kalee's Shrine. !. f f liii for Harry and Alan ? . . . She listened awhile on tiptoe at the lintel. Her heart beat fast. A voice was certainly speaking— it was evidently Olga's. She caught the very words. It said in clear and definite accents, "It was very wrong of me I I left off in the midst I I OUGHT TO HAVE FINISHED DOING WHAT SHE BID ME ! " Mrs. Hilary Tristram went on relieved. They were awake, no doubt, but talking about some quite indifferent matters. Some little dereliction of every- day duty. Olga's voice was perfectly wakeful. What a pity the draught had had so little effect upon her. But if Mrs. Tristram could have looked that mo- ment through the panels of the door, she would have seen Norah lying fascinated in her own bed, and Olga, with wide-staring eyes fixed wildly upon her, standing in her delicate white-frilled night-dress b/ *he rustling curtains, and coiling in her bloodless trcn>bling fingers that big silk handkerchief— the In- dian roomal I Kalee's Shrine. M5 CHAPTER XI. AFTER THE TEMPEST. Next morning, Olga remembered in a dim way that she had slept very, very soundly : and she awoke with that painful weary feeling in the muscles of the throat and neck which often follows a strong dose of any powerful narcotic. She was sure Dr. Hazleby had given her something to make her doze off: and as she glanced askance at Norah, still sleeping heavily on her onn bed -there were two in the room— she felt certain that Norah too had drunk something other than wine in the draught the doctor had so carelessly handed her. She looked in the glass, and saw there were deep dark rings round her big eyes. Alan would think her quite plain to-day. ... Had Alan come back ? . . . The thought, recurring slowly, as in a dream, made all her fears revive again. She felt the drug hadn't worn itself out yet, or she would have remembered him sooner ! She dressed quickly without waking Norah. lO ' Ifl 146 Kaiee's Shrine. fi 11 -II |H "Poor darling, "she thought ; '^ she was tired too. Let her sleep her sleep out. It will do her good. She isn't as anxious to know about her brother, of course, as I am to hear about dear, dear Alan." She went downstairs looking pale and haggard. Mrs. Tristram rose to kiss her as she entered the breakfast-room. ''My dear," she said, "you're not well this morning. That horrid mesmerism did you no good. I shall never allow you again, as long as I live, to play such tricks with your constitution." "Oh, I shall be all right soon, thanks," Olga answered distractedly, sitting down to the table and turning over the envelope of a letter on her plate with careless fingers. ''It tired me rather— that was all. . . . Have Harry Bickersteth and Mr. Tennant come back home yet.? " "No," Mrs. Tristram replied gravely. "But I'm not frightened, dear. . . . At least, not very. If anything serious had happened, wed surely have heard it long before this time. The fishermen would have told us. Boys will be boys, and will get into mischief. They Ve gone up the river and got too far or sor.ething, and had to stop the night no doubt at Ponton. We shall have a telegram, I ilt Kalee's Shrine. 147 fancy, before we 've finished breakfast. Is Norah coming down ? How is she this morning ? " Olga blushed, she knew not why. "No," she answered with incomprehensible evasiveness. '-She isn't dressed yet. She . . . she hasn't got up, in fact. She s sleeping so soundly. I think . . .in fact, I fancy ... Dr. Hazleby must have given us something to make us sleep, you know." Mrs. Tristram smiled a knowing smile. '*So he did," she answered. ''Indian hemp. That's what's making Norah so oversleep herself." Olga gave a faint little shudder. "Indian hemp !' she murmured. ''Always something Indian ! I hate India and all that belongs to it. It seems somehow to be a sort of fatality with me that every- thing Indian should always bring some kind of mis- fortune." "Oh, don't say that," Mrs. Tristram cried in evident alarm. - Please don't. You mustn't even think it. Why, Harry s duck-boat— the boat they Ve both gone up the river in, you know— it 's called the Indum Princess, Olga. Harry named it in joke after the little Maharanee he met last autumn down in Norfolk. " At the word, Olga suddenly dropped the knife and fork with which she was pretending to play with ' /jf s 148 Kalee*s Shrine. I i II i I ^ i'. ■ i f t her breakfast, and stood staring- hard before her, with the same strange far-away look in her eyes Mrs. Tristram had noticed the previous even ing during the whole of those horrid mesmeric experiments. A single word rose once more to her lips. She muttered it twice, — '* Kalee ! Kalee ! " At that very moment, the door opened, and Sir Donald Mackinnon entered unannounced. "We old Indians are inquisitive," he said gravely, with a slight bow, " but I ve come round early to inquire this morning after my friend. Miss Norah. I haven't slept a single wink to-night, with this second sight of mine, thinking about her, Mrs. Tristram. I 've lain awake and listened to the owls hooting, and the waves breaking, and imagined all manner of evil things, and fancied I could hear her moaning and groaning. How is she this morning, can you tell me, Miss Trevelyan ? Not up yet, ah? I hope there's nothing serious the matter with her. . . . Eh .? what ? . . . Why, what ails the lassie ? You 're looking uncommon pale and ill and gash yourself, too." "Norah 's asleep," Olga answered, trembling, she knew not why, and shrinking horribly from the old man's keen and searching glance. *♦ I I 1 i Kalee's Shrine. 149 3re her, er eyes s even esmeric J more Kalee ! and Sir ravely, ;arly to Norah. th this ■, Mrs. le owls led all ear her )rning, 3t, ah ? h her. lassie ? 1 gash iblingf, )m the "I— I thought it was best not to wake her. She seemed so very ill and weak and tired." Sir Donald gazed at her coldly and sternly. "Young lady," he said in a harsh voice, "I'm think- ing it 's not all right this morning with my friend, Miss Norah. Will you go up and call her, please, Mrs. Tristram.? There's mischief, I'm afraid, in this young lady's eyes. We Highlanders know the eerie look in them, and what it portends in the way of evil !" Mrs. Hilary Tristram ran upstairs with vague forebodings of trouble in her heart. Olga followed her, half unconscious with terror, and weighed down with some awful burden of remorse,— for what, she knew not. The room had two little cretonne-curtained beds in it. In one of them, Olga had slept that night. The curtains of the other were half drawn, and Norah's form was still lying, quite stiff and motion- less, beneath the dainty coverlet. Olga approached softly on tiptoe. "Norah!" she whispered. " Darling Norah ! " A corner of the sheet just covered her face. Norah neither stirred nor answered. With gentle fingers, Olga drew the bedclothes from her face and neck. Then wi'fh n f*^qrf„i oUrW H I I ! i v. I !!•!! li i ■' ■m\i 150 Kalee's Shrine. , iH she fell back and fainted. The shriek rang and vi- brated through the whole house. It was a death- like cry of unutterable agony. In a moment, the awful truth had burst upon her soul. She remembered it all, all quite clearly now. Norah was dead, and she herself was her murderer. She herself was her murderer : she herself— and Kalee ! The cry roused the whole household like a tocsin. Sir Donald and the servants hurried to the room. They found Olga insensible, supported in Mrs. Tristram's arms, while Norah, stretched upon the bed, with head thrown back, lay motionless and still as a marble statue. Her pretty blue eyes stood wide open, fixed in a deathly stare on the blank ceiling ; the soft dimpled cheeks showed white and ashen ; and, most terrible of all, around her smooth fair neck appeared in awful distinctness a dark blue line—the livid death-markof that fatal handkerchief. For one solemn moment no one stirred or spoke or even breathed almost. They stood stricken and petrified at the horrid sight. Then Sir Donald, slowly awaking as if from a hideous dream, lifted the senseless Olga in his arms, and carried her off to another room unresisting. ''This is a matter for the police," he said sternly. u t- Kalee's Shrine. 151 "There's been murder done, and we know who did it." He looked suspiciously at the little silver image on her neck— the image of Kalee that the fakir had hung there. A dark red smear passed across its face. He gazed closer. It was blood— blood— blood on her lips— the fresh clotted blood of a human victim ! Blood had spurted for a moment from Norah's mouth in the agony of the throttling. Kalee that night had drunk of her sacrifice. As Mrs. Tristram, unable yet to realize the terri- ble truth, stood wringing her helpless hands by Norah's bedside, a servant came in with a message from the boatmen. "Something about Master Harry," she whispered soft below her breath. "They're afraid he's lost. The boatmen say the Indian Princess has come floating down the river with the tide this morn- ing . . . empty, quite empty, and bottom up- ward. " Mrs. Tristram answered never a word. Her cup was full already. Nothing else would make much difference. She merely stood and rocked herself idly backward and forward, in the impotent reckless- ness of utter misery. i i 152 Kalee's Shrine. I i I I m li! W' m Next minute, Olga glided to her side. She had come back to herself, and stood now erect and pale and tremulous and beautiful. "Send for the police," she said in a stony tone. "I know I did it. I give myself up. I have noth- ing to say for myself.— Norah is dead. It was I who killed her.— Alan is dead. I have heard the message.— I loved them both. I shall be glad to die. I have nothing to live for. I deserve it ! I deserve it ! " Once more a servant entered in hot haste, and held a telegram which she handed half hesitatingly on the salver to Olga. The girl dashed it aside with an imperious wave of her white hand. "Perhaps," Mrs. Tristram murmured in a low voice, "it may be from Harry or Mr. Tennant." Sir Donald opened it mechanically and read it aloud : " Congratulations, dear Olga, and best wishes for your future happiness. You have chosen well. " EVERARD AND MaRION TrEVELVAN." It was an Indian telegram ! Always India ! What mockery it seemed at such a moment ! Surely, surely Kalee had sent it ! It was Kalee's appropriate greeting to her votary. Kalee's Shrine. 153 CHAPTER XII. AN AQUATIC EXCURSION. Meanwhile, where were Harry Bickersteth and Alan Tennant ? Up the river in the India7i Princess, they had had an easy voyage, lazily paddling for the first hour or two. The mud-banks of the Thore, ugly as they seem at first sight, have nevertheless a singular and unwonted interest of their own ; the interest derived from pure weirdness, and melancholy, and loneli- ness—a strange contrast to the bustling life and gayety of the bright little watering place whose church tower rises conspicuously visible over the dykes beyond them. On the vast soft ooze-flats, solemn gulls stalk soberly, upheld by their broad web-feet from sinking: while among the number- less torrents caused by the ebbing tide tall long- legged herons stand with arched necks and eager eyes, keenly intent on the quick pursuit of the elu- sive elves in the stream below. The grass -wrack waves dark in the current underneath, and the prett" \ 154 Kalee's Shrine. i 1 : i ■ ^ d ■i " ! ; m ■ sea-lavender purples the muddy islets in the side channels with its scentless bloom. Altogether a strange, quaint, desolate spot, that Thore estuary, bounded on either side by marshy saltings, where long-horned black cattle wander unrestrained, and high en})ankments keep out the encroaching sea at floods and spring-tides. Not a house or a cottage lies anywhere in sight. Miles upon miles of slush in the inundated channels give place beyond to miles upon miles of drained and reclaimed marsh- land by the uninhabited saltings in the rear. They had paddled their way quietly and noise- lessly among the flats and islets for a couple of hours, carefully noting the marks of the wary wild- fowl on either side, and talking in low tones together about that perennial topic of living interest to all past or present generations of Oxford men, the dear old 'Varsity. Alan still held a fellowship at Oriel, and Harry was an undergraduate of Queen's : so the two found plenty of matter to converse about in common, comparing notes as to the deeds of daring in bearding the proctors, feats of prowess in town and gown rows, the fatal obsequiousness of the Ox- ford tradesm;in, and the inevitable final evolution- ary avatar of that mild being under a new and ter- rible form as the persistent dun, to the end of their i : Kalee's Shrine. 155 tether. Such memories are sweet— when sufficient- ly remote : and the Oxford man who does not love to talk them over with the rising spirits of a younger generation deserves never to have drunk Archdea- con at Merton or to have smoked Bacon's best Manillas beneath the hospitable rafters of Christ Church common room. At last, in turning up a side streamlet, on the southern bank,— Thorborough, as everybody knows, lies to the northward,— they passed an islet of the usual soft Thore slime, on whose tiny summit grew a big bunch of that particular local East Anglian wild-flower which Olga had said she would like to paint, on the day of Sir Donald Mackinnon's picnic. "I say, Bickersteth," Alan suggested lightly, as they passed close beneath it : "don't you think we could manage to pick a stem or two of the artemisia —that feathery fluffy yellow flower there.? Miss Trevelyan "—and he tried not to look too conscious — "wants to make a little picture out of it, she told me. I expect we could pull in and get near enough to clutch at a branch or so." "No," Harry answered, shaking his head confi- dently. "I know by heart all the tricks and man- ners of the creeks and the river here. I know every twist and turn of the backwaters. No quicksand H 1 ' If H ri I i tBHHtm hh 1:1 iifi 156 Kalee's Shrine. on earth could possibly be more treacherous than our Thore mud. Ii 's a mud per se, quite unique in its own way for stickiness. If you try to land on it, you go on sinking, sinking, sinking, like an ele- phant in a bog, or a Siberian mammoth, till you dis- appear at last bodily below the surface with a gentle gurgle ; and the mud closes neatly over your head ; and they fish you out a few days later with a crooked boat-hook, as Mr. Mantalini says, 'ademd moist unpleasant corpse,' and dirty at that into the bargain. You must wait and get a bit of the stuff a little further on. There 's plenty more growing higher up the backwater. We can land easier there on some of the hards, where the side creeks run deep and clear over solid pebble bottoms." They paddled on noiselessly through the water as before, away up the silent, unpeopled inlet, am.ong the lonely ooze and great stranded islands of salt-marsh vegetation. At every stroke, the aspect of the country grew wilder and more deso- late. At last they came to a broad expansion of the tributary creek. Alan could hardly have believed any place so solitary existed in England. Some of the islands, surrounded on every side by slimy channels of deep ooze, could only be approached by a boat at high spring-tides, and even then nowhere , i Kalee's Shrine. 157 save at a single unobtrusive landing-place. They were thickly overgrown with rank brown hay. "And even the owners," Harry said laughing, and pointing to one such dreary flat with demon- strative finger, "only visit them once a year in a shallow punt or low barge at hay-making time to cut the hay-crop. Sometimes the bargemen from up stream at Ponton come for a lark in the night, before the owner harvests it, and mow the crop, and carry it away down the river and out by sea to market in London ; and nobody ever knows a word about it till the owner turns up disconsolate a week or so later, and finds his hay clean gone, and not a soul en earth to tell him what the dickens has ever become of it." " It s fearfully lonely," Alan said with a shudder, looking round him in surprise at the trackless waste of ooze and sedges. " If a man were to get lost or murdered in one of these dreary channels, novi^, it might be weeks and weeks — ay, and years too — before anybody on earth ever discovered him." "It might," Harry answered. "You say the truth. A capital place indeed for a murder. As De Quincey says, you could recommend it confidently to a friend. Nobody 'd ever be one penny the wiser. — See, there 's some more of your flower nod- pii 158 Kalee's Shrine. n I j I ding away on the bank over yonder— what did you call it?— artcmisia, wasn't it? Well, here we can get at it, I expect, with a little trouble, if you don't mind wading. You 're prepared to go through fire and water, I suppose, for Miss Trcvelyan ? " Alan's face grew somewhat graver. "I'm pre- pared to get my bags wet through in the sea," he said, "if that's all, to do anything reasonable, for any lady. Miss Trevelyan said she 'd like the flower, and I thought I might as well try to get a little bit for her. " 'MVell, you needn't be so huffy about it, anyhow," Harry went on, good-humoredly. "No harm in being in love with a pretty girl, that I know of: at least it doesn't say so in the Ten Commandments. Stick the pole firm into the bottom there, will you? By Jove, the stream runs fast! How deep is it? About two feet, eh ? Well, we can tuck our trousers up to the thighs and wade ahead then. Tlie chan- nel of the stream 's firm enough here. Pebble bot- tom ! I expect it 's pebble right up to the island." They pulled off their shoes and socks hurriedly, and rolled up their trousers as Harry had suggested. Then the younger lad stepped lightly out of the boat on to the solid floor, and drove the pole deep into the slimy mud-bank beside it. The mud rose Kalee's Shrine. 159 in a veritable cliff, and seemed to the eye quite firm and consistent; but it -fave before the pole like slush in the street, where the brushes have heaped it on one side by the -utters. He tied the duck-bont to the pole by the painter, and gave a hand to Alan as his friend stopj)cd out with a litrht foot into the midst of the little rapid channel. "Bottom 's quite solid just here," he said. "You needn't funk it. We can walk close up to the side of the island. These streams run regularly over hard bottoms, though the mud rises sheer on either side of them, till you get quite up to the head waters. There they lose themselves, as it were, in the mud : or at least, ooze out of it by little driblets from nowhere in particular. Come along, Tennant. We can pick some of Miss Trevelyan s specialite on the far side of the island, I fancy." They waded slowly up the rapid current, Alan pushing his stick as he went into the mud-bank, which looked as firm and solid as a rock, but really proved on nearer trial to be made up of deep soft light-brown slush. They attacked the island from every side— a double current ran right round it— but all in vain : an impenetrable barrier of oozy mud girt it round unassailably on every side like the moat of a castle. M i[ 1 . !j liii if < '< \ |; i! \ '1 .mJ i6o Kalee's Shrine. 1 i > \m ij ii 1 : "I shall try to walk through it" Alan cried at last in a sort of mock desperation, planting one foot boldly in the midst of the mud. "What's slush and dirt, however thick, compared with the expressed wishes of a fair lady ? " As he spoke, he began to sink ominously into the soft deep ooze, till his leg was covered right up to the thigh. Harry seized his arm with a nervous grasp in instant trepidation. "For Heaven's sake," he cried, "what are you doing, Tennant ? The stuff's got no bottom at all. Jump, back, jump back- here, take my hand for it ! You '11 sink right down into an endless mud slough." iVlan felt himself still sinking : but instead of drawing back as Harry told him, and letting his whole weight fall on to the one foot still securely planted on the solid bed of the little river, he lifted that one safe support right off the ground, and tried with his stick to find a foothold in the treacherous mud-bank. Next instant, he had sunk with both legs up to his waist, and was struggling vainly to recover his position by grasping at the overhanging weeds on the island. Harry, with wonderful presence of mind, did not try at all to save him as he stood, lest both should r ' Kalee's Shrine. i6i tumble together into the slough ; but running back hastily for the pole, fastened the boat to his own walking-stick which he stuck into the mud, and brought back the longer piece of wood in his hands to -...here Alan stood, still struggling violently, and sunk to the armpits in the devouring slush. He took his own stand firmly on the pebbly bottom of the little stream, stuck the far end of the pole on the surface of the island, and then lowered it to the level of Alans hands, so as to form a sort of rude extemporized crane or lever. Alan clutched at it quickly with eager grip ; and Harry, who was a strong young fellow enough, gradually raised him out of the encumbering mud by lifting the pole to the height of his shoulders. Next minute, Alan stood beside him on the hard, and looked ruefully down at his wet and dripping muddy clothes, one malodorous mass of deep black ooze from waist to ankle. "You must stand up to your arms in the stream," Harry said laughing, in answer to his comically rueful glance, -and let the water wash away the mud a little. A pretty pickle you look, to be sure. By George, I thought for a minute it was all up with you ! You won't trifle with Thore ooze again in a hurry, 1 fancy." II i ■ ; 1 • ■' ! I ;»i i i ! ■• !1 Vji I If ill 162 Kalee's Shrine. Alan pulled off his flannel boating jacket and his once white ducks with a gesture of disgust, and began scrubbing them between his hands in the discolored water. " I must sit on the island and let them dry," he said in no very pleasant voice, "I can't go home to Thorborough looking such a mess as this, you know, Harry." "How '11 you get on the island.?" Harry asked incredulously. "Why, you just hold the pole as you did, so, and I '11 go hand over hand, like a British acrobat on parallel bars, across the mud-bank." "And leave me to stand here in the water alone till your clothes have dried to your perfect satisfac- tion ! No thank you, no thank you, my dear fellow." " I can get you over when once I 've got across, myself," Alan answered lightly. "Hold the pole out a little below the middle, and lift you, so, as if I were a circus man." "I venture to doubt your gym.nastic capabili- ♦I'es " " Try me, anyhow. If it doesn 't succeed, I '11 come back at once to you." Harry fixed the pole on the island once more, Kalee's Shrine. 163 aiK 1 his St, and in the iry, "he ) h ome lis, you and Alan, clasping it tight with his hard grip, and lifting up his legs well above the mud-bank, made his way, hand over hand, as acrobats do along a tight rope or a trapeze, to the solid surface of the little island. There he laid out his clothes care- fully to dry, and ,at down, holding the pole as he had suggested, lever fashion, for Harry. By dex- terous twisting, he managed to land his friend safely on the island, where they both sat down on the sun-dried top, and gazed disconsolate on the fearful waste of mud arounri them. "Curious how hard the bottom is," Alan said after a while, -in the midst of so much soft ooze and slush and stuff! " "The currrent washes away the soft mud, you see," Harry answered glibly, as he lighte-', his pipe, ^'leaving only the pebbles it selects at the bottom.' Segregation ! segregation ! It s always so over all these flats. You can walk anywhere on the bottom of these streamlets." "Well, at least," Alan said, glancing about him complacently, "we 've got the flowers— any number we want of them. I should have felt like a fool indeed if I 'd sunk up to my waist in that beastly ooze there, and yet never succeeded in getting what I came for. The flowers alone are the trophy 1 64 Kalee's Shrine. ri I' IM of victory. It 's a foreign artemlsia, got stranded here by accident. Indian Wormwood or Lover's Bane the herbalists call it." And he gathered a big bunch of the yellow blossoms from the summit of the island, tying them together loosely with a shred from his handkerchief (Men in love think nothing, it may be parenthetically observed, of tearing up a new cambric handkerchief. At a later date, it is to be feared, the person for whose sake they tear it up takes good care to repress any future outbursts of such absurd extravagance.) They sat on the island for nearly an hour, and then, as the sun was shining hot overhead, Alan's clothes were sufficiently dried for him to put them on again in a somewhat dingy, damp, and clinging condition. The problem now was to get back again. Alan successfully lifted down his friend at the end of the pole, in true acrobat fashion : but just as Harry touched ground in the centre of the little stream, the pole creaked and gave ominously in the middle. "Take care of it, Tennant," the young man cried, as he fixed it once more across his shoulder. "Don't trust the weak point in the middle too much. Glide lightly over the thin ice ! Hand over hand as quick as you can manage ! " tranded Lover's id a big nmit of a shred othing, ig up a it is to ar it up irsts of ir, and Alan's t them inging t back end at 1 : but of the iiously f man )ulder. [e too d over Kalee's Shrine. 165 "All right," Alan cried, suiting the deed to the word, and hastily letting himself glide with a rapid sliding motion along the frail support. As he reached the middle, with a sudden snap, the pole broke. Alan did not hesitate for a minute. If he fell where he was, he would sink helplessly into the engulfing mud. He had had enough of that, and knew what it m^eant now. With the im- petus of the breakage, he sprang dexterously for- ward, and just clearing the mud, fell on his hands and knees upon the hard, right in front of Harry. "Hurt yourself, eh?" his friend asked, picking him up quickly. "Not much," Alan answered, flinging the broken pole angrily into the stream. "Barked my knees a little : that 's about all. We 're unfortunate to day. The stars are against us. There 's a trifle too much adventure to suit my taste, it strikes me somehow, in your East Anglian rivers ! " "Here 's a nice fellow ! " Harry retorted, laugh- ing. "Adventures are to the adventurous, don't they say. You first go and try a mad plan to pick a useless little bunch of fluffy small flowers for a fair lady, quite in the most approved romantic fashion, for all the world like the London Reader ; and then when vou fall anH hnrV Tronr i'"^ ••• V3 W V X^l. ': i { i II l]iii t \A i66 I I ii^ Kalee's Shrine. it, you lay the blame of your own mishaps on our poor unoffending East Anglian rivers ! " "I've got the flowers still, anyhow," Alan an- swered triumphantly, holding them up and waving them above his head, crushed and dripping, but nevertheless perfectly intact, in his bleeding hand. He had knocked his fist against the bottom to break his fall, and cut the skin rather badly about the wrist and knuckles. " Well, it 's high time we got back to the boat," Harry continued carelessly. "If we don't make haste, we shan't be back soon enough for me to dress for dinner. I must get home before seven. Aunt 's got the usual select dinner-party stirring this evening." They turned the corner, wading still, but through much deeper water than that they had at first en- countered (for the tide was now steadily rising), and made their way to the well-remembered spot where they had loosely fastened the light duck- boat. To their annoyance and surprise, no boat was anywhere to be seen in the neighborhood. Only a mark as of a pole dragged by main force out of the mud,— the mark left by Harry's walking- stick. Kalee's Shrine. 167 s on our Uan an- vvaving ing, but ig hand, to break out the e boat," t make r me to seven, ing this :hrough [irst en- rising), ed spot t duck- They gazed at one another blankly for a moment. Then Alan burst into a merry laugh. "Talk about adventures," he said; "they'll certainly never be ended to-day. The duck-boat must have floated off on its own account quietly without us." But Harry, instead of laughing, turned deadly pale. He knew the river better than his com- panion, and realized at oncc the full terror of the situation. "Tennant," he cried, clutching his friend's arm nervously and eagerly ; " we 're lost .? we're lost! The duck-boat has floated off without us : there 's no getting away, no getting away anyhow ! No living power on earth can possibly save us from drowning by inches as the tide rises I " iBl II ;i at was Only out of aiking- i68 Kalee's Shrine. CHAPTER XIII. LOST. f i ■f i Alan stared at his friend in blank dismay. It was some time before he could fully take in the real seriousness of their present position. But he knew Harry was no coward, and he could see by his blanched cheek and bloodless lips that a terrible danger actually environed them. " Where 's she gone ?" he asked at last tremulously. Harry screened his eyes from the sun with his hands. ''Down stream, at first," he said, peering about in vain, ''till tide rose high enough; then up, no doubt, heaven knows where, but out of sight, out of sight anyhow ! " Alan examined the bank closely. He saw in a moment how the accident had happened. Harry, in his haste to fetch the pole to save him, had driven his own walking-stick carelessly into the larger and looser hole left by the bigger piece of wood ; and the force of the current, dragging at the boat, liad pulled Kalee's Shrine. 169 It was the real he knew e by his I terrible uilously. with his ig about n up, no ight, out aw in a Harry, d driven rger and and the id pulled it slowly out of the unresisting mud-bank. It might have been gone a full hour : and where it had got to, no earthly power could possibly tell them. " Can't we swim out ? " he asked eagerly at last. "You and I are both tolerable swimmers." Harry shook his head very gloomily. " No good," he said. " No good at all, I tell you. The river s bounded by mud for acres. It 's six miles at least down to Hurdham Pier, the very first place there 's a chance of landing. If you tried to land anywhere else before, you'd sink in mud like the mud you stuck in just now at the island. We 're bounded round by mud on every side. We stand on a little narrow shelf of pebble, with a vastswampy quagmire of mud gird- ing it in for miles and miles and miles together." ** Can't we walk up to the source.?" Alan en- quired despondently, beginning to realize the full terror of the situation. ''It may keep hard till we reach terra firma ? " "It may, but it doesn't, I'm pretty sure," Harry answered with a groan. "However, there's no harm anyhow in trying. Let's walk up and see where we get to.' They waded on in silence together, feeling the bottom cautiously at each step with their sticks, till the stream began to divide and sub-divide IntQ 170 Kalee's Shrine. i-i little finger-liko muddy tributaries. Choosing the chief of these, they waded up it. Presently the bottom grew softer and softer, and a firm footing more and more impossible. At last, their feet sank in ominously. Harry probed a step in advance with the broken end of the pole that Alan had (lui.g away. The next step was into the muddy quagmire. Land still lay a mile distant apparently in that direction. The intervening belt was one huge waste expanse of liquid treachery. They tried again up another tributary, and then a third, and a fourth, and so on throuf-h all the ra- diating minor streamlets, but still ahvays with the same disheartening result. There was no rest for the sole of their foot anywhere. Above, the o^.^eams all ended in mud ; below, they slowly deepened to the tidal river. A few hundred yards of intervening solid bottom alone provided them with a lirm foott hold. ''I wish to goodness," Alan cried petulantly, ''we'd never got out of that confounded duck^ boat ! " "It's too late wishing now," Harry murmured half to himself, with a remorseful glance at the ill- omened flowers. -We've got to face the very worst. The tide 's rising^. It rises above the level Kalee's Shrine. 171 of the mud. Not enough for us to swim in, though. We'll have to stand here as well as w Ccdi on the hard till we can stand no more, and then swim or float for dear life as far as our strength or chance will carry us." Alan bit his lip in utter despair. He had but ojie thought now. That thought was for Olga. Olga would miss them ! Olga would be fright-ned ! Should he try the riskiest course of all, and swim if possible the long six miles to the pier at Hurdham.? No, no. That after ah would he sheer suicide. Better hang or to the last wild chance at all I /ards, and wait for the possible approach up stream of a barge or row-boat. He took out his watch. It was half-past six. They were going upstaii s to dress for dinner now at the Tristram's at Thorboroueh. "Couldn't we manage to get back on top ( the island?" he said at last. "We might wait ei then for almost any length of time, till we could signal with a handkor hief to some passing eel-boat. That'd be better at ieast 'han waiting here in the middle of the channel till the tide rises." Harry shook his head with almost sullen despair. "No, no," he cried. 'Impossible, impossible! You know how^ sticky you found the mud, With-- h : ^PP 172 Kalee's Shrine. I' i\ ^1^ out the pole we could never by any chance get there. We 'd only sink over head and ears in that devilish slush. You don't know the ways of the Thore as well as I do. Sinking in water's bad enough, but sinking in mud's ten thousand times more terrible. It clogs you and hampers you on every side. Struggling or swimming only makes things worse. You go down in it helplessly, suf- focating as you go, and there isn't a chance of re- covering even your dead body. If we drown in peace and let the tide drift us afterwards down the river, they'll bury us decently anyhow at Thor- borough." Alan went back once more to the neighborhood of the island. He scanned it eagerly now all around. It was no longer a question of getting a handful of pretty tiowers for Olga-it was a pressing urgent life-and-death necessity. But the more he looked at it, the more utterly imp.)ssible and im- practicable it seemed. Only seven or eight feet of light-brown mud separated them with its gap from that haven of refuge ; and yet the seven or eight feet proved a greater barrier than miles and miles of land or water could ever have done. Water you can swim through, land you can walk over, but mud is absolutely and utterly impassable. !■■ i Kalee's Shrine. 173 nee get i in that i of the ?r's bad d times you on makes ily, suf- e of re- own in >vvn the ; Thor- orhood ovv all tting a ressing ore he iid im- feet of p from ht feet )f land u can nud is He returned to where Harry sat crouching in the stream, hugging his knees, and gazing blankly and wildly straight in front of him. "Sit down," Harry said: "this is the highest point. The water here perhaps may not rise above our heads. But we '11 have to wait and let it rise slowly. You must sit as long as you can, till tide reaches about to your neck. Then kneel ; and after that, stand up and face it. The water rises warm over these basking shallows. If it lay cold, it would be much worse for us. We shall hold out now for about six hours. If a boat comes by, well and good. If not " He threw his head back significantly, and closed his eyes, gurgling low with his throat in a speaking pantomime. Alan thought only of Olga. They sat there silent in the running water, hug- ging their knees, for twenty minutes. Then Harry took his handkerchief slowly from his pocket, and tied it to the broken end of the pole. "We must hold this up, turn about," he said. " Perhaps some boat may pass and see it." For many minutes, neither spoke again. Then Alan said once more, " Hadn't we better try swim-. .v.: 3" 174 Kalee's Shrine. I I "No," Harry answered. -For-our friends' sake -no. Let us wait on the chance. If the worst comes to the worst, at last, we can swim for dear life. But hold on to the hard as long as it serves you." "Ah, but then we shall be gradually chilled and powerless. If we swin, now, we mifjht manage to keep up for dear life-and for what s dearer than life —till we reached Hurdham." "Impossible," Harry answered with a shake of his head. •• Tide s against us by this time. If we swam up, as tide now runs, we should only be landed on worse mud-banks in the Ponton direction Wait till midnight-the turn s at midnight. Then we might manage to float on our backs, with tide n. our favor, and high water too, to one of the firmer islands a little way down towards Thor- borough. At high tide, some of them are approach- able. " "Till midnight ! " Alan cried. " My dear fellow, do you mean to say we must stop here till mid- night? All in the dark, and with the water rising everywhere around us ? Oh, Harry, Harry, I 'd ten thousand times rather swim for it at once and face it anyhow ! " Harry seized his arm impressively, "It's your [^ ij n Kalee's Shrine. 175 ■■»> >i I one chance, Tennant," he said in a low firm voice. "Wait! ... For Olga ! " In a moment Alan noticed the strangeness of the tone. " For Olga ?" he cried. " For Olga .? For Olga?" "Yes," Harry answered, almost bitterly. "Do you think I'm thinking only of myself.? What a coward you must .^ncy me .? We young fellows always fall in love, they say, with girls older than ourselves. And do you think I haven't fallen in love with Olga Trevelyan .? How could I help it? Who could help it ? As much as you have, I tell you, Tennant : every bit as much as you have. For her sake, you've got to get baci: ; and for her sake I 've got to help you. What s the use of making secrets between us now? I know you love her. I know she loves you. If you don't come back, it '11 break her heart. She 's got a heart of the kind that 's given to breaking. Well, I love her too. I know I 'm a young fellow, and I know I shall get over it. In the end, I shall do like all the rest of us, marry some other girl younger than myself, and try to fancy she 's as good and as pure and as beautiful as Olga. But while it lasts, it 's as real to me as it is to you, I tell you, Tennant. It 's Olga who 's got us both into this scrape. If I hadn't aided and abetted nil JtMii' 1/6 Kalee's Shrine. m ■■J f i ' you this afternoon, you wouldn't have got on the island there, to pick the bunch of flowers for Olga. I helped you, because I knew she 'd be pleased that you 'd got them for her, and that you 'd taken a little trouble to g-et them-and risked a little danger into the bargain. And now we Ve both got to get you back to Olga. Never mind about me : that doesn't matter. You 're taller than me : you can overtop the water a good half-hour longer. If I get drowned, you can take my body, and put it on the mud by the island yonder, and use it as a stepping-stone to get across upon. I expect it 'd bear you up for a minute; enough to jump safe on to the top of the island. Somebody's sure to be up here with a boat within the next day or two. You could hold out for two or three days even without food, on top of the island, and then you could get back home at last- to Olga." Alan could answer nothing in return. The tears stood thick in his eyes. He took the young fellow's hand in his and wrung it in silence with a long hard grip. "Harry," he said at last in a choking voice, ' • you 're a splendid fellow. If we Ve got to die we shall die together. Nor even for her, not even for her could I ever desert you. Let 's tie the flowers f" i, r Kalee's Shrine. 177 around our waists. Then if we die, Olga '11 knovy we died at any rate for her sake." "No," Harry murmured in a low soft voice. " Let's throw them away : far, far away from us. Then if we die, Olga '11 have nothing at all in future to reproach herself with. She '11 think we died up the creeks and backwaters looking after the wild- fowl shooting for our own pleasure.'* Alan answered never a word. But he felt in his heart that the young man's thought was the truest and noblest. He flung the bunch far from him into the middle of the stream. The rising tide brought it back to his hands, and then carried it vaguely up on its fl^x>d among the fiats behind them. 12 i if u i • f! 178 Kalee's Shrine. CHAPTER XIV. SUSPENSE. The water had now risen up to their waists as they sat dripping in the middle current. They shifted their position, and took to kneeling. The shades began to fall slowly over the land. The stars came out overhead one by one. The gulls and rooks retired in slow procession from the purple mud- flats : the herons rose on flapping wings from fish- ing in the streams, and stretched their long necks, free and full, homeward towards the heronry. Nothing on earth could have seemed more aw- some in its ghastly loneliness than that wide ex- panse under the gathering shades of autumn twilight. The water rose slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly. Inch by inch it gained stealthily but stead- ily upon them. It reached up to their waists, to their sides, to their breasts, to their shoulders. Very soon they would have to cease kneeling, and take to the final standing position. And after that ^the deluge ! Kalee's Slirine, 179 aists as They r. The he stars d rooks 3 mud- m fish- necks, re aw- de ex- utumn [ovvly, stead- its, to ilders. I, and ;r that Bats began to hawk for moths in number over the mud-flats. A great white owl hooted from the open sky above. Now and again, the scream of the sea-swallows, themselves invisible, broke sud- denly from the upper air. Even the clang of the hours from the Thorborough church tower floated faintly across the desolate saltings to the place where they waited for slowly-coming death. " I should like one pipe before I die," Harry said stoically, feeling in his pockets for a box of matches. ** You haven't got such a thing as a light about you, have you, Tennant.? " ''I've got a flint and steel," Alan answered, pull- ing it out, *' but I 'm afraid it 's wet with the mud by the island." He opened the box. To Harry's surprise and delight, the tinder within — a long coil of yellow wick — was dry and untouched, preserved from harm by the metal covering. "This is better than a match," he cried with new hope. "It's better than a pipe, Tennant. It's a signal : a signal ! Keep the tinder alight, and hoist it on a pole, and perhaps it '11 attract some one of the mud-anglers." "Who are the mud-anglers ? " Alan asked shiv- ering. I :^ i8o Kalee's Shrine. I i "Men who come out fishing for eels in the streams as the tide rises," Harry answered, fired with fresh expectation. "They walk across the mud, with a lantern in their hands, and catch eels in the tidal channels." " Walk on the mud ! " Alan cried. "But how can they ? How can they ? And if they can, why can't we too, Harry .? " Harry waved his hand a little impatiently. "They walk with mud-shoes, "he answered with a slight cough. " Alud-shoes are thin flat pieces of board, turned up at the end and strapped on the foot, like small boats ; and they glide on them across the mud as people glide with snow-shoes over the snow in Canada. In shape they 're very much like the toboggans we used to slide on when I was a boy down the hills at Halifax. You 've seen pictures of toboggans in the papers, haven't you? Well, that 's a mud-shoe : and the mud-anglers wear them. There are pretty sure to be mud-anglers about to-night, and this light might possibly hap- pen to attract one." As he spoke, he tore a shred from his handker- chief, and with it fastened the smouldering wick to the broken pole. Below the sparks of light thus pre- cariously obtained, he tied the remainder of the f s in the ed, fired OSS the itch eels 3ut how in, why ed with ieces of on the 1 them v-shoes re very 1 when ve seen t you? s wear anglers f hap- ndker- inck to LIS pre- Df the Kalee's Shrine. i8i handkerchief itself The wick lighted it up with a faint illumination, and together they served to form a slight danger-signal, sufficient to take the atten- tion of a passing mud-angler, if any should chance to come within sight of the feeble illuminant. The evening fell darker and darker. The tide rose slowly, remorselessly. The mud-flats ceased to glimmer faintly with the long reflection of the twilight afterglow. All was silent and black and invisible, save for the shrill cry of the bats as they swooped overhead, and the tiny glow of the saltpetre tinder-wick on the flapping handker- chief. The water compelled them now to stand. Arm- in-arm they stood before it, facing together that crawling, slow, resistless enemy. If it had been waves to buffet and overcome, however fierce, even that would have been better. One would have felt then one was at least fighting them. But the utter sense of helplessness and impotence in face of that quiet, noiseless creeping flood was too appalling. Harry's teeth began to chatter with cold. The long immersion, even in that sun-warmed water, was gradually telling upon him. His limbs were stiff, and his blood coursed slowly. They passed the pipe silently from one to the II I 1.1 I '1 1 82 Kalee's Shrine. I I ill If Other, for Alan's last cigar was long since finished. It helped to warm and comfort them a little. "Thank heaven," Harry said with real fervor as he took it once from his friend's mouth, "thank heaven for tobacco. " Half-past eight. Nine. Half-past nine. The bell clanged it out loudly from the Thorborough steeple, and the echoes, stole reverberant with end- less resonance across the lonely intervening mud- flats. How long the intervals seemed between ! Twenty times in every half-hour the two young men lowered the slowly smouldering wick, and held Harry's watch up to the light, to read how the min- utes went on its dial. Half-past nine, and now breast high ! Ten, eleven, twelve, still to run ! The water would rise far above their heads ! Each minute now was an eternity of agony. Save for Olga's sake, they would have taken to swimming, and flung away the last chance of life recklessly. It is easier to swim— and die at once-than to stand still, with the cruel cold water creeping slowly and ceaselessly up you. At twenty-five minutes to ten, they lowered the light and looked once more. As they did so, a faint long gleam streaming along the mud-flats struck Harry's eyes in the far distance. The light Kalee's Shrine. 183 inished. jrvor as "thank . The )o rough ith end- g: mud- tween ! ngmen id held le min- d now 3 run ! Each ^ve for iming, :lessly. > stand ly and 2d the so, a d-flats 5 light i from which it came lay below their horizon ; but the gleam itself, repeated and reflected, hit the side of the bank opposite them. Harry's quick senses jumped at it in a moment. "A mud-angler! A mud-angler!" he cried ex- citedly, and waved the pole and handkerchief above with a sudden access of feverish energy. Would the mud-angler see them ? that was the question. The flicker of the wick was but veryslight. How far off could it possibly be visible.? They waved it frantically on the bare chance of attracting his attention. For five minutes there was an awful suspense ; and then Harry s accustomed ear caught a faint noise borne dimly across the long low mud-flats. "He 'scorning! He's coming!' he cried joy- ously. And then putting his two hands to his mouth, he burst into a long, sharp, shrill coo-ee. "You'll frighten him away!" Alan suggested anxiously. " He '11 think it 's a ghost or something like one." But even as he spoke, the gleam of a lantern struck upon the mud, and the light shone clearer and ever clearer before them. "Hallo!" Harry cried. "In distress here! Help ! help ! We 're drowning ! We 're drowning ! " )! i84 Kalee's Shrine. A man's voice answered from above. "Ahoy! ahoy ! Mow did yow git there ? " Thank heaven ! they were saved !— Or next door toitl The man approached the cdj^-c of the mud-bank as close as he dare (for the edges are very steep and slippery), and turning his lantern full upon them, stood looking at the two half-drowned men, as they gasped up to their breasts in water. " How did yow git there, I say ? " he asked once more sullenly. "Can you help us out?" Harry cried in return. The man shook his head. "Dunno as I can!" he answered with a stupid grin. ' ' I can 't go no nearer the edge nor this. It s bad walking. Mud 's deep. How did yow git there?" "Waded up, and our boat floated off," Harry cried in despair. "Can't you get a rope? Can't you send a boat? Can't you do anything anyhow to help us?" The man gazed at them with the crass and vacant stupidity of the born rustic. "Dunno as I can," he muttered once more. "Yow'd ought to a stuck to your boat, yow 'ad. That's just what yow 'd ought to a done, I take it." Knloc's Shrine. 185 1 *' Is thcr " bv>at anywhere near? " Alan cried dis- tracted, oiiUln't you pat ly boat out from somevvhcri. > sjvc us? " "Tlu c ain't no boat," the •" luswercd slowly and stolidly. " T.caslvviiys none nearer nor Thor- borough. Or m dit 'Urdhani. Tom Wilkes, 'e 'ave a boat up yonder at Ponton. Ikit that 's right across t'other side o' the water." And he gazed at them still with rural indiflerenco "My friend," Alan cried, h a burst of help- lessness, "we've been here in the water since six o'clock. The tide 's rising slowly around us. In a couple of hours, it "11 rise above our heads. We 're faint and cold and almost exhausted. For heaven's sake don't stand there idle : can't you do something to save two fellow-creatures from drowning ? " The man shook his head imperturbably once more. " I dunno as I can," he murmured complacently, " Mud hereabouts is terrible dangerous. Yow 'd ought to 'a stuck to your boat, yow know. There ain't no landing anywheres hereabouts. If I was to give yow a hand, I 'd fall in, myself. I ex- pect yow '11 have to stick there now till yow 're right drownded. I can't git no nearer yow nohow. " ( :i y IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) W4 f/ /, o fl"^ Q.r y 1.0 I.I 1.25 '- ilia |50 l"== U 1^ 1.4 M IIM 1.6 P^. "-y 'cM ^(^ "^^ ^f J*

w ? " he 3olishly. g: up the I as well I you be , drawl- aid anx- d, can't of dis- lOUlit," hat 's a :o keep pt and en. If there 's ^e may urry. — eleven I'ithout ke the The man nodded a stolid acquiescence, and turn- ed once more slowly on his heel. They watched him silently receding — receding. Light and reflec- tion faded o^radually away. The faint plash of his wooden mud-shoes on the flat surface was heard no more. Nothing remained save the gurgling of the water. They were left alone — alone with the darkness. That second loneliness was lonelier than ever. Too cold to speak, almost too cold even to hope, they stood there still, linked arm-in-arm, ready to faint, with the speechless stars burning br'j^^ht over- head, and the waters rising pitilessly around them. In that last moment, Alan's thoughts were turned to Olga. Beautiful, innocent, ger tle-souled Olga. If he died that night, he died, on however petty an errand it might be, for Olga's sake — for Olga — for Olga. And then he relapsed into a kind of chilly stupor. in irtHlli I ! 190 Kalee's Shrine. -a . !!i CHAPTER XV. HIGH TIDE. Ten o'clock. . . . Half-past ten. . Eleven. Numbed and half-dead, they heard the clock strike out, as in some ghastly dream, and waited and watched for the return of the mud- angler. It was n't so very far to the shore. Surely, surely he should be back by this time. The waters in the estuary rose by slow, by almost imperceptible degrees. But still they rose. They went on rising. They were up to Harry's neck now. He rested his chin on the edge of the water. Five minutes more, and all would be up. Faint and weary, he would fall in the channel. "Look here, Tennant," he murmured at last, grasping his friend's hand beneath the surface in a hard long grip : " I 'm going to swim now. It 's no use waiting. I 've only got five minutes to live. ... I mustn't stop here. If I stop, you know, when the water rises, I shall choke and struggle. Kalee's Shrine. 191 ;ard the m, and e mud- , surely )w, by y rose. Harry's : of the be up. 3l. it last, face in r. It's to live. know, rug:gle. Then you'll clutch me hold, and try to save me, and that '11 spoil your own last chance of living. I 'm going to swim. It won't be far. But it 's better at any rate than dying like a dog with a stone round its neck, still here on the bottom. Good-bye, old fellow. Good-bye forever. Never let Olga know if you get back safe, what it was we did it for ! " Alan held him hard with whatever life was yet left in him. "Stop, stop, Harry," he cried in dismay. "There 's still a chance. Every minute 's a chance. Don't go, don't go. Stop with me, for heaven's sake, and if we must die, let 's die together." "No, no," Harry answered in a resolute voice. "You 've got half-an-hour's purchase of life better than I have, now, Tennant. For Olga's sake^ you must let me go. For Olga's sake, you must try to save yourself." "Never," Alan cried, firmly and hastily. "Not even for Olga's sake ! Never ! Never ! " At that moment, a loud shout of inquiry re- sounded over the mud flats ! A noise of men ! A glimmer of lanterns ! Alan seized his friend, and lifted him in his arms. "Saved! Saved!" he cried. "Shout, Harry I Shout ! Shout, shout, my dear, dear Harry I " 192 Kalee's Shrine. |S' i \ pi Harry shouted aloud with a long wild cry. It was the despairing cry of a dying man, and it echoed and re-echoed along the undulating mud-flats. Alan lighted the wick, which he had held all this time for dryness in his teeth, and fitted it once more into the crack of the pole. Harry v/aved it madly about over his head. One moment more of deadly suspense. Then an answering cry told them at last that the men with the lanterns saw them and heard them. Next instant, the men were on the brink of the mud, and the light of the lanterns poured full upon them. A voice very different from that of their friend the mud-angler shouted aloud in a commanding tone, " Shove off the raft ! Look out for your heads there ! " Before they knew exactly what it was that was happening, a great square raft, roughly improvised from two cottage doors, nailed together by cross- pieces, floated on the stream full in front of them : and Alan, scrambling on to it with a violent strug- gle, lifted up the faint and weary Harry in his arms to the dry and solid place of safety. The men pulled them alongside w'ith two ropes attached to the raft ; and the same voice that had {i HI it i.r \'* Kalee's Shrine. 193 It was echoed ts. I all this it once .^aved it more of :ry told ns saw : of the ill upon end the ig tone, ■ heads lat was rovised '• cross- them : t strug- s arms ropes lat had spoken first said once more in kindly tones, ' ' Brandy, hot. Take a good pull at it ! Don't be afraid. Next, your turn. . . . After that, this. A pull o' soup. It '11 warm your heart, man. Now, sit on the raft and recover a little." Alan sat on the raft giddily, as he was bid, and laid Harry's head on his lap like a woman. One of the men — not their mud-angler — pulled off his dry jersey at once, and handed it over to Alan with native kindliness. Alan laid it under Harry's head. The poor fellow was half fainting, half asleep with exhaustion. They gave him more beef-tea, and more brandy. He revived slowly ; and meanwhile, the raft lay idle alongside, the men in mud-shoes standing on the bank and looking over. "We must get along soon," one of them said, after a pause. "Water's rising. Soon be over the flats. Can you walk?" kindly, to Alan. And he held up a pair of mud-shoes in his hand to explain his question. "I never tried them," Alan answered, looking at them dubiously: "but I dare say I could. Any- how, I '11 risk it. He sat on the raft and put them on as the man directed him. Then they reached down a pole, which the four men held ; and with it they lifted 13 ( ll III w lltii 194 Kalee's Shrine. Iiiin up on to the mud-hank. He took his stand there uneasily cnouj^h. "Don't fall, whatever you do," the chief speaker said encoura^^^ns;ly ; "and don't stumble. Glide along on 'em the same as if you was skating. Keep from stumbling, and you '11 be all right. Are you getting warmer? Have another pull at the soup, and a bit o' biscuit." Alan ate the proffered food thankfully. Thank heaven, their first mud-angling acquaintance was no fair sample of the whole fraternity. "Now for the other one," the speaker continued. " It ain 't no good giving him mud-shoes. He ain't in no fit state at all for walking. We must drag him along somehow on the raft, Billy. Here you, sir ; hold on to the raft. Now, all together ! Heave him up ! heave oh ! " The four men took hold of the ropes at once, and pulled the raft, with Harry on it, over the shelving bank, now nearly level with the rising water, and on to the mud-flats. Then they tied the two ropes firmly to the pole : placed it in front of them as a sort of support or axletree, and all pulling at it, with Alan in the middle, began to make their way shore- ward. They struck across the flats by the nearest way, II: lis stand f speaker Glide skating. lit. Are 11 at the Thank nee was ntinued. He ain't ist dr.ig ere yon, Heave ice, and shelving ter, and o ropes em as a it, with f shore- >t way, Kale'j's Shrine. 195 walking slowly, on Alan's account, and dragging the raft easily behind them. It sank slightly in the mud as they went, but not much ; and the men pulled it as if well accustomed to that singular conveyance. After only a few hundred yards of mud, Alan was perfectly astonished to find that they reached the dyke and the reclaimed marshes. So near had they been all the time to land in one direction, and yet so dangerously far and remote from it. "We couldn't come sooner," the chief speaker explained kindly to Alan, noticing his surprise. "Billy came "—pointing to their first friend, the mud-angler — " and told us at once all about you. But I knowed it was no use going on the search till we could do something practical-like to save you ; and there wasn't a minute to spare, I'll warrant you. In half an hour, the flats '11 be covered : as soon as they 're covered, the mud's soft, and there ain't no possibility o' walking on it. We'd got to hunt up two more men, and a couple o' vacant pairs o' mud shoes : and as all the lot was out on the flats, that wasn't none so easy neither. Then we 'd got to take down them there two doors, and nail 'em together, and put the ropes to 'em : and it 's precious lucky we thought o' doing it. For if 196 Kalee*s Shrine. tm\ iH It! you 'd had nobody but Billy and them to help you,"— here his voice sank to a confidential whis- per,— "it's my belief, in the manner o' speaking, you 'd both ha' been drovvnded just as you stood there." Alan saw at once in his own mind the wisdom of his new friend's well-arranged plan. To have gone out on the mere impulse, unprovided with the necessary assistance of the raft, would have been worse than useless : the men could only have gazed at them helplessly from the edge of the ooze as their stolid acquaintance Billy had begun by doing. Still, it was awful to think that they had had to stop there drowning by inches while the men on shore were quietly taking down the cottage doors and rudely knocking the extemporized raft and planks together. They might at least have sent somebody on beforehand to tell them help would soon be coming ! Ana then, he reflected once more on the utter loneliness of those wild saltings, with their solitary huts scattered about at long distances, and recognized immediately that the men had acted for the very best,— had done the only thing possible for them. Lucky indeed that one man at least was found among the mud- anglers with a strong hand and a cool head, for if Kalee's S'rine. 197 to help tial whis- ipeaking, 3u stood isdom of ive gone vith the ve been ly have ;he ooze Dgun by ley had hile the cottage zed raft st have m help eflected se wild ibout at ily that id done indeed e mud- d, for if I they had been left entirely to the mercy of Billy and his like-minded associates, they might, as their new friend rightly said, still be drowning by inches in the dark estuary I The men kicked off their mud-shoes dexterously, and piled them up in a low shed, thatched with rushes, on the very edge of the drained saltings. Then without a word, and as if by signal given, they lifted up Alan and Harry between them, two vJ two, and carried them across the steamin^r fields to a small cottage. It was the home of the man who had directed the others — Tom Wilkes, the captain of the mud-anglers. Late as it was, the women were sitting up to receive them : a bright wood fire burned merrily on the kitchen hearth ; and a steaming kettle hissed in the midst of it. They laid them in chairs close to the fireside j removed iheir wet clothes hastily, and wrapped them round as they stood in dry blankets. The fire and food soon revived Harry ; and the men carried him upstairs to a bed, where he was soon asleep and comfortably settled. As for Alan, worn out as he was, his first idea was to get back to Thorborough at all hazards. Olga would be waiting anxiously to hear about him. Could he borrow a horse and ride home alone ? I i! It 11' v:l ^11' i ■ i ilf i 198 Kalee's Shrine. Tom Wilkes shook his head in a decided nega- tive. There wasn't a horse for three miles about— nothing but sheep and cattle on the saltii\^'s : and as to Thorborough, it was t'other side river, and river spread in fingers and fingers, with saltings be- tween, so that there wasn't no bridge without you went round right away by Winningham. In those lonely peninsulas of Suffolk and Essex, indeed, spots may be found more utterly isolated from the outer world than any to be seen in Wales or Scotland— saltings cut off by interminable back- waters and interlacing estuaries from any inter- course save in one long straight line, with surround- ing districts. It was only six miles, as the crow flies, from Tom Wilkes's cottage to the church at Thorborough ; yet the road by land led ten miles inland, and then fifteen miles more round to avoid the rivers. There was no hope for it. Anxious as he was Alan was positively compelled to sleep at the cot- tage, and early next morning, he mentally resolved, he would walk with his host to the nearest ''hard" or landing-place, and there hire a boat to take him to Thorborough. He went to bed, and with the aid of more jr?inay, Dourcu. down hot. soon fell asleen. from isleep. Kalee's Shrine. led nega- 3 about — ^•^'S : and 'iver, and Itings be- lout you id Essex, isolated in Wales )le back- \y inter- urround- ;he crow hurch at :en miles to avoid ! he was the cot- esolved, ' ' hard " :ake him )f more !p, from 199 sheer fatigue and weariness. For an hour or more he slept very soundly — the deep sleep that suc- ceeds exhaustion. Then about two o'clock, he awoke with a sudden start. He had dreamed some- thing. A cold perspiration seized upon his limbs. He shuddered and listened. In his dream he fancied he had heard some noise ! A stifled cry ! A sup- pressed groan ! A faint utterance ! he knew not what. It seem.ed to come, not from the room where he slept, but, vaguely floating, from the air above him. He sat up in bed and listened again. It was only the beating and fluttering of his own heart. "I hope to goodness nothing's the matter with Olga," he said to himself wearily. "I felt as if something — something terrible, were happening over yonder to Olga! Poor child! she'll be half dead with i:ight at our stopping away. How absurd of me to wake and feel like this ! I 'm almost superstitious myself to-night ! No wonder, either, after such an adventure on death's brink as that one ! In five minutes more, the shudder had passed away entirely : he turned round, fell asleep again, and slept soundly till eight in the morning. ii [If i ■ . i i n "^' i : : t ^ ,y^-\^ : Hif '1^. it '■ f 2CX> Kalee's Shrine. CHAPTER XVI. THE BUBBLE PRICKED. At eight o'clock, Alan rose and dressed himself, in a shirt and jersey and pair of sailor trousers, coarse, indeed, but dry and warm, lent him by their kindly host and rescuer of last evening. Sleep i ad done him a world of good. Accustomed to expos- ure in his student days, he rallied fast with food and warmth; and when he went down at last to the simple breakfast in the cottage living-room, he was ready to do full justice to the smoking rasher, home- made bread, and hot coffee, that Tom Wilkes's wife set temptingly before him. Harry, however, had suffered far more. Exhaus- tion and chill had told severely upon him. He was hot and feverish. It would be impossible to move him from the cottage for the present. He must clearly stop there till he got well again. There was no danger, but need for nursiug. Meanwhile, Alan felt, for his own part, he must go back at once to Thorborough to report to Olga. Poor Olga, she I himself, trousers, by their leep i ad o expos- ood and t to the he was r, home- ^s's wife Exhaus- He was o move [e must ere was le, Alan once to Kalee*s Shrine. 201 would be wondering sadly what fate on earth could possibly have befallen them ! After breakfast, he said a temporary good-bye to Harry — not without many regrets — and walked briskly with his host by the salting footpath as far as Hurdham. There, at the little wooden pier, they found a boat, and sailed with a lucky wind against the rising tide to the well-known landing-place at Thorborough Haven. In ten minutes from their arrival, Alan was up at the hotel, had written out a cheque for the promised reward (not that Tom Wilkes himself cared so much for that), and had set- tled once more with infinite comfort into his proper garments. Then, without waiting for anything else he hurried along the Shell Path with eager foot- steps till he reached Mrs. Hilary Tristram's door. His heart bounded as he rang the bell ! One mo- ment more, and he would be with Olga ! The servant opened the door to him with a scared face. **You can't see Miss Trevelyan," she answered at once, in reply to his tv/ice repeated question. " She 's upstairs. . . . I don't think anybody at all can see her. She 's with Mrs. Tristram. I b'lieve Sir Donald has sent out for the policeman." ' ' For the policeman i " Alan cried, aghast at the 202 Kalee's Shrine. |l t ! >' \< I) III words, still more at the manner in which they were spoken. " Sent for the policeman ! For Miss Tre- velyan ! Oh no, oh no ! There must be some mis- take. What in heaven's name do you mean to say girl ? " The girl drew back, half offended, at his words, and held the door ajar cautiously. '' I mean what I say," she answered with a slow anddistinct intonation. " Miss Norah 's murdered ! She s lying dead on the bed upstairs. There 's a great black -ing round her poor neck. And they say it was Miss Trevelyan herself as did it. As true as life, Miss Trevelyan 's choked her." While she yet spoke, Olgas face appeared, pale as death, with sunken eyes and haggard cheeks, at the top of the staircase. She had heard Alan's voice as he stood at the door, and even in that hour of anguish and despair, she rushed down wildly to fling herself and li griefs upon his strong bosom. "Alan! Alan!" she cried, as she clasped him with mad energy in her arms. "You're safe! You 're safe !_Yes, I did it ! I did it ! It was Kalee — Kalee ! Kalee bid ine ! I am Kalee's, Kalee's : I belong to Kalee ! That 's why I always sleep with my eyes open ! My ayah told me so when I was a baby ! " Kalee's Shrine. 203 ley were Jiss Tre- )nie mis- 1 to say, > words, I a slow irdered ! 5 a great y say it true as ■d, pale seks, at 's voice lour of Idly to 3som. ^d him safe ! > Kalee alee's : ?p with was a Alan looked down at her in a sudden agony of pity and terror. Ilis practised eye needed no long detail of her present symptoms to read the true secret of the ghastly story. She was half in a trance even now — even now — still comatose and frantic from the last effects of that hateful mesmerism. " Olga, Olga, my darling," he cried, holding her off at arm's length and gazing at her for a mo- ment. "I know it all ! I see it all ! What have they been doing to you ? Did the creature mes- merize you ? " Mrs. Tristram approached them gently from be- hind. "Olga," she said, in a calm low voice, with her red eyes looking only tenderiicss at the frantic girl, "come with me, love. Mr. Tennant, you will find Sir Donald and Mr. Keen over yonder in the break- fast-room. They will tell you all about our terrible trouble. Norah is dead. Where is Harry.' '' She said it simply, with the infinite calmness of pure despair. Her heart was broken. Those two had been more to her than son and daughter. Yet she took Olga's hand gently in her own. She owed her no grudge for that unconscious act. Her grief was far too ])rofound and sacrei ^or petty thoughts iiess or recrimination. I* .U4 Ill • ; I- 204 Kalee's Shrine. "Harry is safe ! " Alan answered eagerly. " He will soon be back. We were delayed all night. I left him going on well in a cottage on the saltings. . . . This cannot be true, Mrs. Tristram. It cannot be true. She is not dead. There is some error somewhere. " Mrs. Tristram led the passive Olga upstairs once more, shook her head sadly, and pointed with her hand in solemn silence to the door of the breakfast- room. She could not explain. It was too, too painful. ! i i f ■ ; i. ■ ' • ■ ^^H i ' ^^^B: 1 ■1 1 Alan entered the breakfast-room with a sinking heart. Sir Donald and Mr. Keen were conversing low by themselves at the bow-window. They turned at once as Alan entered. "This is a bad business, Mr. Tennant," Sir Donald said solemnly as the young man looked at him with accusing eyes. - 1 feared as much. I told you so before. The curse has worked itself out. There 's mischief come of it." "Sir Donald Mackinnon," Alan said in a stern voice, not offering the gray old man his hand, but standing bolt upright like a denouncing spirit before him, " answer me one thing first of all ! Is it true you have dared to send for the police for Miss Tre velyan ? " Kalee's Shrine. 205 ''He ight. I altings. am. It s some 's once ith her ;akfast- >o, too jinking versing )onald n with '"ou so here 's stern d, but before leyou ran ? " Sir Donald stared at him in blank surprise. "Not yet, not yet," he answered evasively as soon as he could find his voice again : — " though I feel as a magistrate I ought to have sent for them much earlier. There 's been murder done, and we should hand the culprit over impartially to justice. She may have known it, or she may not have known it : but that's for a jury of her countrymen to try. We mustn't go and settle it for them beforehand. I meant. . . I meant to send Mr. Keen shortly to get the police here." The young man eyed him with a calm disdain. Sir Donald quailed a little tremulously before him. He looked so stern, and cold, and judicial. "Sir Donald Mackinnon," he said again, in a hard dry tone, " answer me one more question, will you ? Were you a party in my absence last night to mesmerizing (as they call it) Miss Trevelyan ? " Sir Donald shuffled somewhat in his shoes. ♦' Mr. Keen," he said, with an attempt at hauteur, "will tell you all about it." The mesmerist smiled feebly out of the wrinkled corners of his cold glazed eyes— those expression- less gray-blue eyes of his — and murmured with an apologetic and exculpatory wave of his long thin fingers, 'I I 206 Kalee's Shrine. lIM; H I 4 i^ "I don't understand Hindustani myself. There was Hindustani spoken at the experiment. I thinic Sir Donald, who knows it, had better tell you." Neither of them, on second thoughts, felt partic- ularly proud of his own sliare in the transaction, it was evident. However, Alan somewhat saved them the trouble by catching instinctively at the fatal tell-tale word Hindustani. ** Hindustani ! " he cried. "Then there was Hindustani spoken ! Before you venture, sir, to send for the police to this house, have the goodness to tell me, pray, who spoke Plindustani? " ' ' I did, " Sir Donald replied nervously. He twirled his watch-chain, and cast down his eyes, ill at ease nc doubt with his own conscience. " Tell Pie all you know about the circumstances," Alan said, in a low tone of quiet authority. The old civilian bridled up for a moment. Who was this young doctor that he should order and cross-examine an officer of the Crown .? Then, see- ing the stern look still glaring in the young man's eyes, he changed his mind, began his tale, and ran rapidly through the whole pitiful story, as it figured itself as of course to his superstitious Highland imagination. Alan faced him in silence, flushed and angry. Kalee's Shrine. 207 There I think I." partic- iaction, saved at the e was sir, to odness twirled it ease inces," Who 3r and 1, see- man's id ran igured :hhand mgry. The mesmerist stood behind, with a furtive glance, folding his long thin hands a little nervously one over the other. Sir Donald hummed and hawed occasionally, but told his terrible story on the whole without demur, in plain and straightforward soldier- like language. Alan drank in every word as he uttered it with eager attention, noting it all down, point after point, as the superstitious Highlander unconsciously un- folded the rise and outgrowth of that deadly tragedy in his own excited and preoccupied brain. At last, when the old man had fully finished speaking, Alan drew back a pace or two in wrath, and said in a low, distinct voice, "Sir Donald Mackinnon and Mr. Keen: you do well to stand there covered with confusion. This is a very bad business indeed for you. There has been a conspiracy — perhaps an unconscious one, but still a conspiracy — between you two to work this mischief. If murder has been done, it is you who are the murderers ! . . . You, you, not that innocent young girl ! . . . You, sir, and you ; YOU who are the murderers ! " Sir Donald fell back a step, astonished and dis- mayed. I 208 Kalee's Shrine. \<\ Itii; r ' I'! "Me!" he repeated, vacantly and half-angrily. "Me the murderer! Me, did you say, Mr. Ten- nant? Why, what in heaven's name do you mean by that, sir?" Alan ans.vered slowly and distinctly, crossing his arms, and gazing at him with relentless ac- cusation. "Miss Trevelyan is a very nervous and excitable person. Her temperament is too highly overstrung. She suffers from a peculiar affection of the eyes—due no doubt, as you say, to an operation performed on her in infancy by some Thug priest over in India, which renders her particularly liable to occasional fits of hysterical somnambulism. I myself have seen her walk in her sleep since I came to Thorborough. You too, I now for the first time learn, also saw her on that same occasion. Those two facts put to- gether suggested to your mind a hideous delusion. For weeks you have talked to her about India and her childhood. You have filled her head with wild and horrible ideas about Thuggee. Having a very timid and delicate nervous organization to work upon, you have worked upon it mercilessly— uncon- sciously, I know, but none the less mercilessly— by endless details about the practice of assassination and the worship of Kalee. You have recalled to the poor III Kalee's Shrine. 209 cirl's terrified mind all that she ever heard or guessed or picked up accidentally from servants in India in her childish days about the ghastly Thugs and their detestable goddess. You have roused her to such a pitch of abnormal excitement that snatches of Hin- dustani, long since forgotten, came back to h of themselves in her disturbed sleep, and horrible images dogged her and terrified her in her waking moments. All this you have done under my very eyes : I knew it all and saw it all : but because you were an old man, and I was a young one, I fool- ishly forbore to warn you and expostulate with you. I wish to heaven, now, I had had the cour- age to do so earlier." He paused a moment, to gain more breath ; and as he spoke, a faint gleam of nascent comprehen- sion seemed to rise slowly in the dull, glazed, boiled-fishy eyes of the professional mesmerist. " So much you had done, and so far you had gone, Sir Donald Mackinnon," Alan went on bit- terly, holding up his finger to enforce silence, "up to last evening. Had I been here, you should have gone no further. I warned Miss Bickersteth not to allow your guest over yonder to mesmerize my future wife on any account. I meant myself to hftve seen that the prohibition was carried into i f j i J ■ [III 210 Kalcc's Shrine. cffoct had I been here. I knew that in her cxistinj^ nervous state— shattered as her health has been by so many recent occurrences— to trifle with her con- stitution would be little short of deliberate crimi- nality. lUit, driven on by your puerile superstition —a superstition of the lowest Indian fanatics,— you thou^dit nothinj,^ of that— you thou^dit nothing of her— you thought nothing of me— you thought nothing of anything but your own wild fancies. You only wished to bring about evil, in order that you might have the feminine delight of wagging your head sapiently, when all was over, and say- ing, as you now say, 'Ah, well, I told you so.' Tlur foolish delight you have actually exhibited to me here this mo-ning. And I stand in front of you as your accuser this moment, telling you plainly, if murder has been done, as I fear it has been done, that I charge you with the murder. You, you, you are the murderer ! " Sir Donald grasped the back of a chair with trembling lingers. His head swam. The young man's words were very bitter, but the provocation was indeed terrible. It began to dawn upon his dull, superstitious, heavy mind that he had richly deserved them. "Me," he mrf.'^red once more, with feeble re- «l in i in f Kalee's Shrine, 211 existing- been by licr con- e crimi- crstition s, — you liing of thought fancies, ler that sagging ul say- ou so. ' )ited to of you linly, if I done, )u, you ir with young Dcatioii >on his richly 'ble re- s iteration. " l\Ic the murderer ! Mo the murderer ! Oh, Mr. 'Pennant, don't, don't \ccuse me ! " "Yes," Ahm went on, with increasing sternness, unable to spare the quivering old man one single drop from the full cup of his overflowing niiserv. "I was detained last night by a terrible accident, which kept young Bickersteth and myself lingering for hours between life and death in the rising tide in unspeakable suspense and long-drawn agony. I come back, this morning, trembling with fear for the effect of our absence on Miss Trevclyan, to find that you two, with your infernal tricks, and your mesmeric devilry, have driven my future wife, in her unnatural sleep, into committing a horrible but unconscious crime. You two have done it, and you two only. You, sir," turning fiercely upon Mr. Keen, " put her first into a mesmeric trance, with- out one moment's inquiry into her character or con- stitution or previous state of health. To do so was nothing short of wickedness. You are a practised mesmerist. You know that your whole art really consists in playing with edge-tools. Yet you play with them unconcernedly, on an innocent young girl, for a moment's applause at an evening party. You, Sir Donald Mackinnon, then proceed to sug- gest by your vague words and obscure hints to Miss \ , 212 Kalce's Shrine. Trcvelyan's excited fancy the commission of a hor- rible and tragic crime; and you su-gest it at the very moment and in the very condition when as you well know and had just seen in another case, the wildest and most impossible of all conceivable suggestions is immediately acted out with unques- tioning faith by the involuntary agent. You knew her will was in temporary abeyance. You knew her conscience was in your safe-keeping. You knew she must do whatever you suggested to her. Yet you dimly suggested the commission of an atrocious murder, borrowed from the rites of a half- civilized race, with every circumstance of horror and stealth and blood-thirstiness, on the person of a friend whom she loved devotedly. You saw her carry out your half-hints to the very letter, and only refrain from the last fatal act and step of all because you roused her just in time from her mes- meric trance to prevent its taking place in your own presence. You saw her wake, horror-stricken and agonized, at the faint recollection of the un- natural crime you had deliberately forced upon her. I know it, because I hear you say it. You have told me all this in your own words and with your own prepossessions. Out of your own mouth, I condemn you as a murderer." llll Kalee's Shrine. 213 of a hor- it at the when, as :her case, nceivable I unques- ou knew ou knew ^. You 1 to her. n of an )f a half- f horror erson of saw her :er, and ?p of all er mes- in your stricken the un- >on her. u have th your 3uth, I He wiped the cold sweat tremulously from his brow. Then he continued once more with his merciless exposition. "You were so full of your foolish supernatural ex- planatioir " he said, " that you never once thought of the natural and true explanation. Believing in the real existence of Kalee, it seems, quite as gen- uinely as the wretched Thugs themselves who wor- ship her, you accepted Kalee's orders as the moving power of what was really brought about in the sleeping girl's mind by your own terrible and un- earthly suggestion. Miss Trevelyan went to her room only half aroused, under the influence of the ghastly delusion your hints had created in her. You never asked whether any precaution had been taken or was to be taken to prevent the final cata- strophe you had so nearly seen consummated. You were satisfied to leave it all to Kalee — that is to say. to the unconscious working out of your own wild hints and hideous imaginings. By an unfor- tunate error of judgment, — a thousand times less serious and criminal than yours, but still a terrible error, — the medical man, who ought to have known better, administered a drug which kept up instead of allaying the abnormal excitement. It rendered the delusion more fixed and permanent. That de- .M 1B 214 Kalee's Shrine. u 1 I Ir ■1 lusion still survives. I saw it at once in Miss Tre- velyan's eyes the moment I entered. We must try to overcome it. But for it and for everything you you are to blame. I say it once more, soberly and seriously, Sir Donald Mackinnon, you are the MURDERER ! " Sir Donald sank back faintly into a chair. The young doctor's words smote him to the heart. In a vague, nascent, half-doubting way, he began to feel nov/ that he had done it all. There was no Kalee ! There had never been a Kalee ! There could be no Kalee ! Superstitious as he was, the old man shrank from admitting even to himself when brought thus face to face with that ultimate question,, the existence and power of the strange gods. ''I didn't mean it ! " he muttered feebly in an un- dertone. -I never meant to suggest anything. I only said she was noosing a roomal. I thought the girl was a votary of Kalee ! " ''You admit the charge," Alan cried bitterly. "You confess ! You admit it ! That is well, so far. But what will a common-sense English jury say to it ? Will they listen to reason ? Will they ever acquit her ? Do you know what ordeal you have brought upon my Olga ? " iii Kalee's Shrine. 215 He could contain himself no longer. All his force and wrath was spent and gone. The terrible pos- sibility of a trial for murder for the woman he loved best in the world overcame him at last. He real- ized the thing vividly in its full awfulness. Bowing his head, broken hearted, upon the table, he wept . bitterly. ,-ii 216 Kalee's Shrine. CHAPTER XVII. {1 Mi iiff' HOPE. The mesmerist paced the room alone. "If a murder has been done," he said slowly, " we two are the murderers. I admit it. I see it. I know my art. The young man is right. Mackinnon led her into it. But has a murder been done at all ? Eh ? Who knows ? 1 don't feel sure of it. That 's just the question." Alan raised his head in an agony of suspense. *'Who has seen Miss Bickersteth .? " he asked hurriedly. "Does Dr. Hazleby give up all hope? In cases of suffocation, it 's so easy at times to confound death with temporary asphyxia. Has everythmg been tried-every possible restorative > What has been done for her ? tell me ! tell me ! " "Nothing, nothing!" Sir Donald Mackinnon exclaimed with a glimpse of hope. *• Hazleby's out—gone over to Hurdham. Nobody s seen her but Keen and myself and Mrs. Tristram, We Kalee's Shrine. 217 thought she was dead ! She looked it, certainly. She' s almost cold, and her pulse isn 't beating." Alan leaped excitedly at once to his feet. " Do you mean to tell me," he cried in surprise and horror, " that you 've given her up before any medical man has even seen her ? A case of stran- gulation ! Fools ! Idiots ! I must go this mo- ment ! Where is she ? Where is she ? " They hurried upstairs with him to Norah's room, where Olga and Mrs. Tristram sat hand-in-hand, tearless, by the bedside, absorbed in that most de- vouring and grinding of griefs, the grief that cannot find relief in weeping. Olga shrank with horror from her lover's gaze as he entered the room. "Oh, Alan, Alan," she cried, gasping, "don't come near me ! Don 't touch me I Don 't touch me ! I know I did it ! I think I did it ; I killed Norah, and I belong to Kalee ! " Alan motioned her gently aside with his hand. He knew it was no time now to soothe her. A servant led her, obedient and unnerved, into the next room. She followed the girl, silent but tear- less. The young doctor felt the pulse and heart a mo- ment. Then a great joy flushed bright in his eyes. «i 218 Kalee's Shrine. ■■» i I ii. [Hi ■ 1 j^H H ■ H ^H' k "There is hope! There is hope!" he cried. "Artificial respiration ! Aflutter! Aflutter! The heart may yet be made to beat. Quick, quick. Brandy! Lay her down on the floor here! Lift her arms ! So, so ! Now again ! Do as I tell you. There is hope ! There is hope ! She is 710/ yet dead, though just next door to it ! We may revive her still ! Heaven grant us success in it." They waited anxiously for twenty minutes, try- ing every restorative that Alans skill and knowl- edge could possibly suggest ; and at the end of that time, Norah slowly drew one long faint breath . . . and then another . . . and another . . . and another . . . and another. Great heavens I what an eternity of suspense it seemed, the second's pause between each of those almost imperceptible, inhalations ! Alan poured some brandy hastily down her throat. It seemed to rouse her. Her heart beat now with regular pulsations. She was coming to ! She was coming to again ! They watched and waited, watched and waited, watched and waited till one o'clock. Then Norah opened her eyes faintly. "Is she here? Is she here?" she cried, staring i Kalee's Shrine. 219 wildly around her. "The black wonian ! The black woman ! the terrible black woman ! " "Hush! Hush!" Alan whispered. "There is no black woman. We are all here. We are taking care of you. See, this is your aunt ! — Hold her hand, Mrs. Tristram. Let her see your face now. . . . Norah ! Norah ! " But Norah gazed still wildly in front of her. " Kalee ! Kalee ! " she cried in terrified accents. "The snakes! The snakes! The handkerchief! The black woman ! Her great eyes ! Her cruel black mouth ! Her pearly white teeth, that smiled so horribly ! " Alan turned with a stern look to Sir Donald Mac'rinnon. ' ee, see," he said, "with your own very eyes, the harm you have done here ! You have put it into both their minds at once — the tool and the victim. It 's a fixed idea, and we can 't get rid of it. They 've acted their parts, each as you sug- gested to them — one the Thug, the other the sacri- fice. They 're both of them still half in the mes- meric state, and the haschish has had the effect of prolonging the delusion. If she keeps this infatua- tion, in her present weak state, for another hour, she '11 die of terror ! she '11 die of terror ! We shall 220 Kalee's Shrine. m , : i, lii save her from one death only to hand her over powerless to another ! " Mr. Keen, who had been helping to promote the artificial breathing, stood forth once more with a fixed look of contrition. He was deeply moved, in spite of his livid eyes : he knew and felt to the very bottom of his soul the harm he had been in- strumental in doing. "Let me try," he said, holding out his long thin hands persuasively. "They were both very hard to wake last night. I expended, perhaps, too much energy in mesmerizing them. They were only very partially awakened. She 's still more or less coma- tose, I can see at a glance. I' 11 try a few passes. Perhaps they'll rouse her." He waved his hand slowly and gently above the prostrate form of the pale young girl, and fixed his eyes quietly on hers. For a moment, Norah's face grew still more painfully excited : then the muscles gradually and gently relaxed, beginning to assume a more peaceful expression. As he continued his passes, the eyes ceased to stare wildly. The eye- lids closed by slow degrees above them. Her head fell back into a natural restful attitude on the pillow. "You haven 't waked her," Alan said with a long- lljii Kalee's Shrine. 221 drawn sigh of profound relief: "but you've done better ; you 've put her into a sound and normal sleep. Leave her alone now till she wakes of her- self. Nothing on earth could possibly be better for her." 222 I' ' J .H f ' ■ 1 1 1 ■ Kalee's Shrine. CHAPTER XVIII. FULFILMENT. Where 's Olga ? " Alan asked, at last, turning with a sigh to Mrs. Hilary Tristram. "In the next room, I suppose," the poor woman answered low, holding Norah s white hand gently in her own. "Oh, Mr. Tennant, Mr. Tennant, how can we ever sufficiently thank you ! Twice, twice, you've given us back our darling ! " Alan held her other hand a moment with friendly pressure. "We have all been saved," he said, "from a ter- rible calamity. I myself from the most terrible and unspeakable of all. I dare not think of it. I dare not speak of it. What man could even contemplate it without a shudder of horror ? " For that haunting mental picture of Olga, his own beautiful, tender-hearted, delicate Olga, stand- ing up deadly pale, in a common felon's dock, and arraigned alone, before a stern judge and twelve stolid jurymen, for the most hideous crime known ng with woman gently jnnant, Twice, riendly 1 a ter- )le and I dare mplate fa, his stand- k, and twelve ino wn Kalee's Shrine. 223 to vile humanity, had floated all those hours wildly before his excited brain, and had almost unmannc?d him for the task of saving her. He had thought it out, as in times of anguish one ivill think out one's coming misery, down to the pettiest details, the most sordid and horrible and sickening possibilities. In those few short hours he had died of grief and shame a thousand times over. Last night's sus- pense, as he stood waiting for the slowly crawling and creeping tide, was as nothing to the agony and horror of soul he had known since he returned to find Olga — in fact if not in intention, at law if not in equity — a murderer ! A murderer ! If he had spoken harshly and angrily to Sir Donald Mackinnon, he had ample grounds for it. The crime that the old Highlander by his superstition and folly had forced upon Alan's own beautiful innocent Olga was enough to make any man stern and revengeful. For Alan Tennant knew — knew beyond the shadow or possibility of a doubt — that Olga herself in her waking moments was utterly incapable of hurting in any way the feeblest or tiniest of living creatures. He knew that she loved Norah devotedly. He knew that in that condition of will to which the mesmerist by his mere bodily power can reduce some of the most delicate and highly-strung of human organiza- II !24 Kalee's Shrine V ii ill tions, no livin^^ being, however pure or good or true or holy, can resist the most hideous or ghastly or wicked of suggestions distinctly presented to it. He knew that under such circumstances the agent becomes but a puppet in the hands of the operator, working out unconsciously as in a vivid dream, without sense of right or wrong, without effort or deliberation, without will or motive, the wildest fancy or maddest impulse of the more active in- telligence. He knew all that— knew it to the point of 'bsolute certainty : but what hope or chance or prospect was there that he could ever make twelve hard-headed British jurymen, with a hard-hearted English judge to direct them, see the matter in the light that he saw it? Woe betide the innocent man or woman whose actions, however righteous or however unconscious, sin against the hard-and-fast technical puerilities of English lawyers. Though their souls be as fair and white and pure as Olga Trevelyan's, though all that is wise or good in the life of England stand aghast at the hideous threatened injustice, those implacable pedants, with their clogging precedents and their hair-splitting distinctions, will nevertheless tie a noose so tight round the culprit's neck that the common conscience and common justice of the ^i! Kak'c's Shrine. 225 whole startled English nation will never, never serve to unfasten it. f Alan walked slowly into the next room. "Where is Miss Trevelyan ? " he asked cf the servant. '• Here I " the girl said, with her finger on her lip, pointing vaguely to the bed. * ' Asleep. Don't wake her. She fell asleep the minute that gentleman with the long lingers began to walk up and down the passage, muttering." "Let her sleep," Alan said, sitting down on the couch. "Better let her sleep the whole effect off. This mesmeric trance has been very terrible in its intensity and duration. " Olga slept soundly, as usual, with her eyes star- ing wide open. For awhile, she lay motionless and quiet on the bed, but presently, the servant beckoned uneasily to Alan, who rose at once, and gazed with anxious eyes down upon her. Her face was begin- ning to be horribly distorted, and a terrible fixed look of fear and agony seemed to grow with each moment in her glaring eyeballs. It was clear that another paroxysm waj coming on. Alan stood and watched it closely from hard by in breathless excite- ment. J5 Ill I t 1: 111 til 226 Kalee's Shrine. r At last, moved as if by some strength not her own, she started to her feet, quivering like an aspen leaf, and stood on the hearthrug, wildly facing him. With clasped hands, and bent head, she paused there for a moment in deathly silence, her great eyes fixed in awful earnestness on some ghastly object which seemed to float invisible in the air before her. A deep voice appeared to ring unheard in her ears. She leant forward in awe as if to catch its accents. "Kalee, Kalee," she murmured low, in a faint tone : "I hear you. I hear you." Then she drew herself up suddenly into an im- posing attitude, sublime, tragic, as if another soul inspired her, and cried aloud in implacable ac- cents : — "Choose; choose; between me— or Death. You have scorned me ! You have betrayed me ! This choice alone, this choice alone remains ! Obey ! Ob'-y me ! " Alan started back with a thrill of horrible recog- nition. Sir Donald's pale face, looking in from the passage at the half-open door, answered it back mutely. Both at once read aright her mysterious action. Carrying on the impulse of the mesmeric state, she was dramatizing the ideas that floated through her mind : acting in her sleep both her own part and the part of Kalee. Kalee's Shrine. 227 She dropped her head submissively once more. A cold chill ran visibly across her shapely shoulders. Through a mist of horror that seemed to obscure her vision she groped with her hands feebly for some one. "Alan," she cried, "help me! help me!" Alan restrained himself with a terrible effort. To wake her now would be no less than homicidal. She drew herself up again proudly to her full height. Her voice a second time rang cold and majestic. She spoke still as the mouthpiece of the pitiless Kalee : — " While your i;yes remain open forever in sleep, you shall have no other help but mine— but Kalee's. You shall see me floating like a black Terror for ever before you. You shall worship me and serve me all your life long. Mystical, awful, bloodthirsty, implacable, I shall stand beside you and watch over you always." Then she pealed out a few sonorous w^ords of rolling Hindustani. Sir Donald alone knew what they meant : — *' I am Kalee, KaLe, the swarthy fury, of a hideous counte- nance, dripping with gore, crowned with snakes, and hung round with a garland of skulls at my girdle. I am she, the horrible, of mis-shapen eyes ; menacing, trident-topped, riding on a tiger : the Black One, the fierce, the terrible, the bloody-toothed. My fangs are red with the flesh of my victims. Choose, choose, this day, which you will take : choose, between me and Death, my votary." 228 Kalee's Shrine. if) It was part of the long-forgotten litany of Kalee, sung over her cradle, years, years before, by her ayah in India. Olga hung her head submissively once more. There was a short struggle— an internal struggle. Then she lifted her eyes proudly in a moment's defiance. "Let me choose death," she said. "Let me choose death, Alan, if death means innocence." HI Ni. The paroxysm was over. She sank back orce more exhausted on the bed. The invisible Presence seemed to fade away, vanquished from before her. Kalee had fled— fled discomfited, But her eyes stood open, open wide as usual. "Run quick," Alan whispered to one of the ser- vants. "Borrow a case of instruments for me and a bottle of chloroform from Dr. Hazleby's. " The servant ran, and returned immediately, bring- ing the case as ordered, and a small phial. Alan chose a lancet carefully from the box, and poured a few drops of the chloroform on a corner of his hand- kerchief. Then he held the wet spot close to Olga's mouth. It took immediate effect. She breathed more heavily. The chloroform had stilled her. Kalee's Shrine. 229 He grasped the lancet firmly in his right hand and made a slight incision, with dexterous gentle- ness, first on the right, then on the left temple, a little below the two wee scars left by the flint knife of the Indian fanatic. Each cut severed a tiny branch nerve, inhibitory to the action of the small muscle which closes the eyelid. A little round drop of blood oozed slowly forth from the capillary vessels on either side, opened by the lancet. Alan brushed them away lightly with his own handkerchief. Next, he loosed with the sharp blade the silken string that tied the silver image of Kalee round her throat. The wretched bauble should no longer remain to vex her with its memories and recall its hideous half-for- gotten associations. He took out his pocket-knife, and with deliberate fingers hacked the soft metal in- to a thousand small pieces. It was pure unalloyed silver, like most Indian jewelers' handicraft, and it cut easily without much resistance. He flung the shapeless fragments angrily out of the open window. They fell unseen among the grass on the lawn. Kalee was annihilated— dead and gone, for Olga Trevelyan, for ever and ever. He returned to the bed. The action of the oper- ation had been instantaneous. Olga's eyelids lay closed in sleep, with her head resting gently on 230 Kalee's Shrine. I ' SI : e ir the smooth white pillow. Her rich silken hair, thrown back in soft tang^led masses from her brow, almost shrouded her temples from sight ; but a tran- quil smile played gently about her lips, and she looked like some Italian picture of a beautiful saint, painted in the days when saintliness was still no rare attribute among us. Pier long dark lashes closed over her eyes, that were never more to be open for Kalee. "Let her sleep, "Alan said, "till she wakes of herself. Mr. Keen, come here ! Undo your passes ! " The mesmerist, waving his long thin hands, went through the releasing movements once more, exactly as he had done before v/ith Norah. The peaceful look deepened on her face as he waved them, and the gentle eyelids closed tighter and tighter. Olga Trevelyan had ceased for ever to be a votary of Kalee. Alan watched her, speechless, by her side, for hours together. She slept so long, he almost feared at last it wac as she herself had said in her agony. Had Kalee claimed her ? Was Death coming to put his seal at length upon her perfect innocence ? From time to timCj thev step^^ed in noiselesslv Kalee's Shrine. 231 and brought him tidings of Norah Bickersteth. But Alan himself refused to move from Olga's side. He must watch still over her safety. At six, she woke. She woke quite naturally, as if from ordinary sleep. Alan and the servants bent over her, inquiring. ** Alan, Alan ! " she cried, lifting up her hands to him joyfully. "Then it s all right ! You 're back, you 're back again ! " ''Yes, yes, darling, "Alan cried, stooping down and kissing her for the first time, unabashed by the presence of others in so terrible a moment. "And Norah's alive — alive and recovering. She's just taken some nourishment this minute." Olga gazed at him blankly with a strange look of doubt and hesitation on her beautiful counte- nance. "Norah?" she said in an inquiring voice. "Norah? Recovering? From what is she re- covering ? . . . I seem to remember. . . . I fancy I dreamed. . . No, no. ... I don't know anything about it. Has Norah been ill? Have I been ill ? Have we slept long ? What 's that bottle for ? Why am I on the bed here ? I can't recollect it ! " Alan drew back a step in surprise. 232 Kalee's Shrine. : ii " Thank God ! thank God ! " he cried. " She was still mesmerized ! She 's forgotten every word, every word about it ! " As he spoke, Mrs. Tristram glided gently into the room. "Mr. Tennant," she said in a low vc "never mention anything of all this to Norah ! She 's wide awake now, and she doesn 't remember a moment in any way since she first fell asleep in the drawing- room last evening." Happily, those two young lives were spared till long afterward all knowledge of the awful drama in which they had uncons. ously played the part of chief actors. They only knew, for the present at least, that that horrid mesmerizing had given them both a serious illness. Olga's eyes closed automatically for a second. They opened again next instant with a burst of astonishment. "Why, what's this?" she asked, in uncontrol- lable surprise. "My eyelids seem to move like a hinge of themselves, somehow." Alan took her hand tenderly in his. "I have cut a little nerve that held them back," he said. "Henceforth, Olga, they will close in sleep like everybodv else's," Kalee's Shrine. 233 "And I shall never have those horrible, horrible dreams again ? " " Never, Olga darling- ; never ! never 1 " She let her head fall gently back against his breast. They were left alone now for a single minute. "Alan," she whispered, low in his car, "my darling, my darling, I am quite, quite happy." When Olga Trevelyan and Alan Tennant were married at St. George's, some six months later, everybody said the bride was looking prettier and stronger than she 'd ever looked in her life before, with that odd expression quite gone altogether from her face and eyes, and such a healthy natural girlish glow on her cheeks instead of it. And every- body considered Norah Bickerstcth far the sweetest and daintiest of the four bridesmaids. So much so, indeed, that Captain Leigh-Tennant (Alan's rich brother, who inherited their uncle Leigh's money) — that dashing young officer in the 8th Hussars — arrived at a very satisfactory understanding with her in the dance that finished up the day 's festiv- ities. And if Plarry Bickersteth went away that evening with a sore heart, muttering to himself that even Alan Tennant, good fellow as he undoubtedly I II 11 i 234 !') n. I i i t Kalee^s Shrine. was, wasn't half good enough for Olga Trcvelyan, it is probable that in the end he will illustrate the truth of his own vaticination, and console himself in a few years' time with some other girl more nearly his coeval. As to Sir Donald Mackinnon, when he recovered, somewhat from his first fright, and came to think the matter over seriously, he would shake his sapient head at times and mutter in a wise voice to his friend Keen, — "My dear sir, that young doctor-fellow explained the thing on strict scientific principles very glibly and eloquently, no doubt : but for my part, I must say, between you and me, when I come to put two and two together, I somehow fancy that in spite of everything, there must be a little kernel of truth after all in the Kalee business." To which Mr. Keen would answer with a solemn shake of his head, — "Nonsense, Mackinnon; that's all your pure Highland superstitiousness and nonsense. Do you want me at my time of life to begin believing in a whole pack of heathen gods and goddesses ? The less said about Kalee, I think, the better. Be- tween you and me, if it comes to that, it's a pre- cious good thing for us two that that young doctor- Kalee's Shrine. 235 I fellow happened to conic home in the nick of time to help us out ofsuch a very awkward predicament. We may thank our stars the thing was all hushed up as cleverly as it was, between him and Mrs. Tristram. It 'd have been a precious fishy business for you and me, I can tell you, my friend, if the girl had gone and died after all, and we 'd been mixed up in the hocus-pocus. Kalee wouldn't have gone far, I fancy, to help us out of it with a cor- oner's jury." "But how about her brother? " Sir Donald once objected, with a grim smile of conclusive logicality. ''What do you make of the murder of her brother- found in his cradle strangled, you know, as I told you that day, with a blue line right round his throat? Who on earth but that girl could possibly have murdered him ? " The mesmerist shrugged his shoulders impa- tiently. "My dear Mackinnon," he said with some asperity, "how should I know how everything has always happened everywhere? Am I an Indian detective, for example ? Surely the fanatic, who- ever it was, who dedicated the girl herself in the first place to Kalee (as her eyes bore witness), would have been quite capable of throttling her \i 236 Kalee*s Shrine. brother into the bargain as a sacrifice to his deities? You're quite at liberty to believe in Kalee yourself, if it gives you any personal consolation to do so : but I for my part utterly refuse to have anything to say to these strange gods." I u-n ! ities ? irself, o so : ng to Books for m Elbrary f( i( n « i( ^ H 1( new JUtisterdam Book Company^ Ptiblisbers and Tmporter$ • • PmDvterian Bmiding ^ * 156 Tim Bn., new VorR 5 Ring Street toronto « « !l ll Ifi I .. * J //these books are not on sale with your bookseller, they can be ordered through him. Or, on receipt of the price in stamps, by check, or money order, they will be sent, carriage free, to any part of the United States or Canada. v i|i Books for the Library Biography. Moltke's Letters to His Wife. The only Complt'te lutition puhlished in any lan- guage. With an Introduction by Sid- ney Whitman, author of " Imperial Germany." Portraits of Moltke and his wife never before pubhshed. An Ac- count of Countess von Moltke's Family, supplied by the Family. And a genea- logical tree, in fac-simile of the Field- Marshal's handwriting. Two volumes. Demy 8vo, $10.00. " Beginning in 1841, the year before his marriage, these letters extend to within a short time of his death. Travels on the Continent, three visits to England and o.ie to Russia, military manccuvres, and three campaigns are covered by this period, during which Captain Von Moltke, known only as the author of the 'Letters from the East,' grew into the greatest director of war since Napoleon. These most interesting^ volumes contain the rec- ord of a life singularly pure and noble, unspoiled by dazzling successes.' —7 '//f Times (London). '•This book will be chiefly valued on account of the insight it affords into the real dispositicm of Moltke. Indeed it will surprise many, for it shows that the eminent soldier was very different from what he was ordinarily conceived to be. He is supposed to have been dry and stern, reticent, almost devoid of human sympathies, and little bet- ter than a strategical machine. As a matter of fact, such an estimate is somewhat of a caricature. To the public and strangers Moltke was cold and silent, but to his family and friends he was affec- tionate, open, and full of kindly forethought. . . . Ashe was a keen and minute observer, his opinion of the people, countries, and sights which m the course of his life he saw, is of interest and value." — The Athenceum (London). ii: :1 Books for the Lihrarjf Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. By Prof. Edward Dowden, author of " Studies in Literature," "Shakspere: His Mind and Art," etc. New and Cheaper Edi- tion. With portrait. One volume. Post 8vo, $4.50. This, //le standard IJfe of Shelley, is now pre- sented in a form convenient to the individual stu- dent. It has been revised by the author, and con- tains an exhaustive index. The Crimean Diary of the Late Genera) Sir Charles A. Windham, K.C.B. With an Introduction by Sir W. H. Russell. Edited by Major Hugh Pearse. With an added chapter on the Defence of Cawnpore, by Lieut. -Col. John Ad ye, C.B. Demy 8vo, $3.00. This interesting diary, supported and amplified by a number of intimate letters, will be found to reveal much that has hitherto been hidden concern- ing the mismanagement of the Crimean campaign. It also clears from adverse criticism the name and reputation of a distinguished and gallant com- mander. The work is furnished with a map and explanatory notes. I Eighty Years Ago; or, the Recollections of an Old Army Doctor, His Adventures on the Fields of Quatre Bras and Water- loo and during the Occupation of Paris, 1815. By the late Dr. Gibney, of Chel- tenham. Edited by his son. Major Gjbney. Crown 8vo, $1.75. 11 Books for the Library ■ From "The Bells" to "King Arthur." By Clement Scott. Fully illustrated, with portraits of Mr. Irving in character, scenes from several plays, and copies of the play-bills. Demy 8vo, $3.50. From the memorable, never-to-be-forgotten even- ing when Irving startled all London with his Mathias, in "The Bells," down to his latest play, " King Arthur." A critical record of the first-night productions at the Lyceum Theatre, London. Not the least interesting feature of this book is the superb frontispiece— a photograph of Mr. Irving, with autograph in fac-simile. Reminiscences of a Yorkshire Natu- ralist. By the late William Crawford Williamson, LL.D., F.R.S., Professor of Botany in Owens College, Manches- ter. Edited by his Wife. Crown 8vo Cloth, gilt top, $2.25 net. "This autobiography gives us an epitome of the advance of scientific thought during the present century, with the added charm and freshness of a personal history of the almost ideal scientific career of a genuine naturalist."— A^a/«r