CHAPTER XIV—Continued.
nl
Rewsa Gunga spoke truth In Delhtl
when he assured King he should some
day wonder at Yasminl's dancing.
She became Joy and bravery and
vouth! She danced a story for them
of the things they knew, She was the
dawn light, touching the distant peaks.
She was the wind that follows it,
sweeping among the junipers and kiss-
ing each as she came. She was laugh-
ter, as the little children laugh when
the cattle are loosed from the byres at
fast to feed In the valleys.
the scent of spring uprising. She was
blossom. She was fruit! Very daugh-
ter of the sparkle of warm sun on
snow, she was the “Heart of the Hills"
herself!
Never was such dancing! Never
such an audience! Never such mad
applause! She danced until the great
rough guards had to run round the
arena with clubbed butts and beat
back trespassers who would have
mobbed her, And every movement—
every gracious woader-curve and step
with which she told her tale was as
purely Greek as the handle on King's
and as the bracelets on
Greek!
And she half-modern Russian, ex-
girl-wife of a semi-civilized hill rajah!
Who taught her? There is nothing
new, even in Khinjan, In the “Hills!”
arena guards at last and burst through
the swinging butts to seize her and
fling her high and worship her
mad barbaric rite, she ran toward the
shield. The four men raised it shoul
der high again. She went to it like
a leaf in the wind—sprang on it as if
wings had lifted her, scarce touching
it with naked toes—and leapt to the
bridge with a laugh.
else under heaven
her bewitchingest.
the far side
like nothing
Yasminl at
without pausing on she
into the dark hole and was gone!
“Come!” yelled Ismall in
He could have heard nothin
cavern was like
from the tumult,
“Whither?' the Afridi in
disgust. “Does the wind ask whither?
Come like the wind and see! They
remember next that they have a
bone to plek with thee! Come away!”
dvice, He
t as Ismail could shoul
King's ear.
; | for
£ 18S,
the apart
to burst
shouted
will
That seemed good enough a
followed as fas
men, deafened,
at cowed |
stupefied, numbed, al
| by the ovation they were
ng the “Heart of their Hills”
As they disappeared after a scramble
through the of the tun-
nel they had entered by, a roar went
up behind them like the birth of earth-
quakes. Looking back over his shoul
der, King saw Yasminl come back into
the hole’s mouth, to stand framed in it
and bow acknowledgment. For the
space of five minutes she stood In the
mouth sume
Deana
VALVE ME
Never Was Such Dancing.
crowd below, Then she went, and the
ut the roof and brought down hun
Iredwelights of splintered stalactite,
Within a minute there were a hun
dred men busy sweeping up the splin
ters. In another minute twenty Zakka
fo hels had begun a sword dance, yell
ing lke demons. A hundred joined
them. In three minutes more the
whole arena was a dinning whirlpool,
and the river's volce was drowned In
shouting and the stamping of ntked
feet on stone,
“Come!” urged Ismall and led the
way.
ing's Inst ropression was of earth's
THE CENTRE REPORTER
| womb on fire and of hellions brewing
| wrath. The stalactites and the hurry-
{ing river multiplied the dancing lights
into a million, and the great roof
| hurled the din down again to make
| Ismail went like a rat down a run,
| and it became so dark that King had
[to follow by ear. ' He Imagined they
were running back toward the ledge
under the waterfall; yet, when Ismail
called a halt at last, panting, groped
behind a great rock for a lamp and lit
| the wick with a common safety mateh,
i before.
“Where are we? King asked.
“Where none dare seek us.
thou afraid?’ asked Ismall,
the lamp to King's face,
“Kuch dar nahin hat!" he answered.
“There is no such thing as fear!”
Suddenly the Afridi blew the lamp
out, and then tke darkness became
solid.
a yard away.
“Ismail !” he whispered.
did not answer him,
He faced about, leaning against the
rock, with the flat of both hands
But Ismail
of its company ; and almost at once he
saw a little bright red light glowing
in the distance. It might have been
ill Company
the clash of rings on a rod. jut he
was beyond being startled. He was
not really sure he was in the world
He was not certain whether it was the
ler yet; or whether time had ceased,
The place where he was did not
look like a cave, but a palace chamber,
gold leaf drawn underneath it,
on the frieze,
was the Grecian
always danging.
sixty figures of her, no two alike,
A dozen lamps were burning, set In
niches cut in the walls at measured
! Intervals,
| two outside, except that thelr horn
chimneys were stained yellow instead
of red, suffusing everything in a golden
glow,
Opposite him was a curtain, rather
{ like that through which he had en-
| tered. Near to the curtain was a bed,
| whose great wooden posts were
! erncked with age. In spite of its age
it was spread with fine new linen
done
lady of the lamps,
wana
to judge, for the darkness was
{| measurable,
turning, he thought he could see
| and made a grab for the flowing beard
that surely must be below them, but
{ he missed.
| “Little light I”
to
should
fish swim to the
{ droned Ismail. “Moths fly
light! Who is a man that he
| now less than they?”
! He turned again and stared at the
light. Dimly, very vaguely he could
1
ward from almost where he stood. He
wns convinced that should he try t«
climb back Ismail would merely reach
| out a hand and shove him down again,
and there was no sense in being put
that indignity. He decided
forward, for there was even less sense
in standing still. So he stooped
feel the floor with his hand
decidir to go forward, There was
no mistaking the finish given by the
trend of countless feet, He was on
highway, and there are not often pit-
falls where so many feet have been.
For all that he went forward
certain Agog did, and it
many minutes before he could see
| certain g blood-red in the
{ behind two lamps, at the to]
{of ten steps,
quite close he saw carpet down the
middle of the steps, so ancient that
the stone showed through in places;
to to
sods
FAS
8
i
as =n
once wns
a
light
yof a flight
When he
glowin
stone went
any, was worn or faded away, Carpet
and ps glowed red too. His own
face, and the hands he held In front
of him were red-hot-poker color, Yet
outside the little ellipse of light the
darkness looked like a thing to lean
ngninst, and the silence was 20 Intense
{that
is
i
ste
1g by his ears,
apparently in a little puff of wind that
up the steps and at the top he stooped
to examine the lamps.
They were bronze, cast, polished and
graved., All round the circumference
of each bowl were figures in half-
| relief, representing a woman dancing.
| he woman of the knife-hilt,
i and of the lamps in the arena! But no
two figures of the dance were alike.
It was the same woman dancing. but
| the artist had chosen twenty differ
ent poses with which to Immortalize
| his skill, and hers. Both lamps burned
| sweet oll with a wick, and eachr had
| a chimney of horn, not at all unlike
in modern lamp chimney, The born
{was stained red.
As he set the second lnmp down he
became aware of a subtle, Interesting
smell, and memory took him back at
once to Ynsminl's room In the Chandni
Chowk in Delhi where he had smelled
it first. It was the peculiar scent he
had been told was Yasminl's own-—a
blend of scents, like a chord of music,
in which musk did not predominate.
He took three strides and touched
the curtains, discovering now for the
first time that there were two of them.
divided down the middle, They were
of leather, and though they looked old
as the “Hills” themselves, the leather
was supple ag good cloth,
| “Kurram Khan hal!" he announced.
But the echo was the only answer.
There was no sound beyond the cur
taine, With his heart ln his mouth he
parted them with both hands, startled
by the sharp jangle of metal rings on
a rod,
80 he stood, with arms outstretoched,
staring-—staring--staring-with eyes
skilled swiftly to take In details, but
with a brain that tried to explain
formed a hundred wild suggestions
and then reeled. He was face to face
with the unexplainable-the riddle of
Khinjan caves, \
The leather curtains slipped through
his fingers and closed behind him “vith
DeaLp?
nL
On It, Above the Linen, & Man and a
Woman Lay Mand in Hand,
In
to
down from It
glide,
and a woman
lun draperies hung
the floor either
above the linen, a man
on
80 exactly to her
that it
HHke Yasmini,
clothing and her naked
@even
4
+
«1.
possessed,
They both seemed asleep, It was
minutes before he satisfied himself
that the man’s breast did not rise and
fall under bronze Roman armor
and that the woman's jeweled gauzy
stuff was still Imagination played
such tricks with him that in the still
ness he Imagined he heard breathing
After he was sure they were both
d, he went nearer, but it
ite yet before he knew the woman
as not she, At first a swild thought
| possessed him that she had killed her
self,
The only thing to show who he had
| been were the letters 8. P. Q. R.on a
great plumed helmet, on a little table
{ by the bed. But she was the woman
j of the lamp-bowls and the frieze. A
{ life-size stone statue in a corner was
{ 50 like her, and like Yasmini too, that
{it was difficult to decide which of the
two it represented,
She had lived when he did, for her
fingers were locked in his. And he
had lived two thousand years ago, be
cause his armor was about as old as
that, and for proof that he had diell
in It part of his breast had turned to
powder Inside the breastplate, The
rest of his body was whole and per
fectly preserved.
Stern, handsome In a high-beaked
Roman way, gray on the temples, firm-
lipped, he lay like an emperor in har
ness, But the pride and resolution on
the
Was a
of hers, Very surely those two had
been lovers,
Both of them looked young and
healthy-~the woman younger than
thirty-<twenty-five at a guess-and
the man perhaps forty, perhaps forty.
five, Every stitch of the man's cloth
ing had decayed, so that his armor
rested on the naked fkin, except for a
dressed leather kilt about his middle,
The leather was as old as the curtains
at the entrance, and as well preserved,
But the woman's silked clothing was
ns new as the bedding. Yet, they both
died about the same time, or how could
thelr finge! have been interlaced?
And some of the jewelry on the wom:
un's clothes was very ancient as well
ns priceless,
He looked closer at the fingers for
signs of force and suddenly caught his
breath, Under the woman's flimsy
sleeve was un wrought gold bracelet,
smaller than that one he himself had
worn in Delhi and up the Khyber, He
raised the loose sleeve to look more
.
i
bare another bracelet, on the man's
right wrist, Size for size, this was the
same as the one that had been stolen
from himself,
Memory prompted him,
outer edge with a
was the little nick
{in the soft gold
He felt its
finger nail, There
that he had made
when he struck it
He touched the
It was warm. He repeated the
Both
ving
bracelets
had
within
tO,
by
warm,
worn
hour
He muttered and frowned in thought,
fu being an
i
i
The leather curtain near the be
moved on its bronze rod.
“Aren't they dears?’ a volce sald In
English behind him. “Aren't
sweet
Yasmini stood not two arms’ lengths
away, lovelier than the dead
because of the merry life in her, young
and warm, aglow, but looking like the
dead woman and the woman of the
frieze—the woman of the lamp-howls—
the statue-—come fo life, speaking to
him in English more sweetly than If
{it had been her mother tongue. The
{ English abuse thelr language. Yas-
| mini caressed y and made It do its
| work twlcé over.
Being dressed
| salaamed low.
the was, she
| stalned tips of her warm
kiss, and he thought she trembled
| when he touched them. But a second
Inter she had snatched them away and
was treating him to ralllery.
| “Man of pills and blisters!” she sald,
| “tell me how those bodies are pre-
iserved! Spill knowledge from that
| les rned skull of thine!”
ie did not answer. He never shone
conversation at any time, having
de as many friends as enemies by
ag nothing until the spirit moves
ut she did not know that yet.
!{ “If I knew for certain
two did not turn to worms,” she went
on. “almost I would choose to die
while I am beautiful! What
ith say, think you, King
It
[tv 0? Speak, man, speak!
{ Ja: struck you dumb?
Bat he did not speak, He was star
zg nt her arm, where whitish
rks on the skin betrayed that brace
let's had been.
“Oh,
had
thay
invy
woman
ns a npative, he
the
fingers to
gave him
why
would
¥ sahib,
Has Khin-
two
those! They are theirs.
{ would turn on me,
stead, while you slept.
hi», while you slept!”
Fie, King sa-
heve done better to have
for then he might
«le«]l her, at least for a while. But
having judged himself, he did not care
a Ag for her judgment of him, She
realized that instantly sand having
found a tool that would not work,
discarded it for a better one. She
grew confidential,
“I borrow them.” she explained,
“put 1 put them back. I take them
for so many days, and when the day
comes-—the gods lke us to be exact!
You were near death when 1 took the
bracelet last night. The time was up.
I would have stabbed you if you had
tried to prevent mel”
Now he spoke at last and gave her
ia first glimpse of an angle of his mind
she had not suspected.
“Princess,” he sald. He used the
word with the deference some men can
combine with effrontery, so that very
tenderness has barbs “You might
have bad that thing back if you had
sont a messenger for it at any time,
A word by a servant would have been
enough”
“You could never have reached
Khinjan then I” she retorted. Her eyes
flashed again, but his did not waver,
“Princess,” he sald, “why speak of
what you don't know?
He thought she would strike like a
snake, but she smiled at him instead.
And when Yasminl has smiled on a
man he has never been just the same
man afterward. He knows more, for
one thing. He has had a lesson In
one of the finer arts,
“I will speak of what I do know,”
asl: amed,
¥
Look I
She pointed at the bed--at the man
on the bed—fingers locked in those of
a woman who looked so like herself,
He looked, knowing well there was
something to be understood, that
stared him in the face. But for the
life of him he could not determine
question or answer,
“What is in your bosom?" she
asked him,
Iie put his hand to his shirt.
“Draw it out I” she said, as a teacher
drills a child.
He drew out the gold-hilted knife
with the bronze blade, with which a
man had meant to murder him. He let
it lle on the palm of his hand and
looked from it to her and back again.
The hilt might have been a portrait of
her modeled from the life,
“Here is another like it,” she sald,
stepping to the bedside, She drew back
the woman's dress at the bosom and
King’s band. “One lay on her bosom
und one on his when I found them!”
“Now, think again!”
He did think, of thirty thousand pos-
and of one impossible idea
that stood up prominent among them
nll and insisted on seeming the only
likely one.
“I! saw the knife in your bosom last
night,” she sald, “and laughed so that
1 nearly wakened you.”
“Why didn't you take it with the
bracelet?’ King asked her, holding it
out. “Take it now. I don’t want it.”
She accepted it and laid it on the
man's bronze armor. Then, however,
she resumed it and played with it.
“Look again!” she sald, “Think and
look again!”
He looked, tnd he knew now, But
he still preferred that she should tell
him, sand his lips shut tight.
“Can you guess why I changed my
wind about you-—wise man?”
She looked from him to the man on
the bed and back to him again. Hav-
ing solved the riddle, King had leisure
be interested in her
watched them analytically, like a Jew.
eler appraising diamonds,
reminiscent, but much mors
and colorful than any
They had the baffling
changing while he watched
fo eyes,
strungely
changeable
had ever
trick
them,
“Having sent a man to kill you, why
did I cease to want to kill you? In-
stead of losing you on the way to Khin-
jan, why did I run risks to
you after you reached here?
Been.
of
protect
Why did
| Earth's Drink tonight? You do
{ know yet? Then I will tell you some-
thing else you do not know. 1 was in
Delhi when you were! 1 watched and
listened while you and Rewa Gunga
talked In my house! I was in Rews
took and you did not! I have learned
nt first hand that you are not a fool
But that wgg not enough! You had to
be three things—clever and brave and
other, The one other you arel
Brave you have proved yourself
be! Clever you must be, to trick your
way into Khinjan caves, even with
Ismail at your elbow! That is why
1 saved your life—because you are
those two things and — and — Ong
other I
She snatched a mirror from a little
ivory table—a modern mirror-——bad
glass, bad art, bad workmanship, but
silver warranted,
“Look In it and then at him!”
ordered.
But he did not need to look. The
man on the bed was not so much like
himeelf as the woman was like her,
‘
§ whe
+
to
she
but the resemblance seemed to grow
| under his eyes, King was the taller
and the younger by several years, but
| the noses were the same, and the
same firm both looked like
Romans.
mouth ;
»-
CHAPTER XVI.
“Athelstan!"
She pronounced his given name as
again and looking into his eyes. There
high lights in hers that out-
gleamed the diamonds on her dress,
“Your gods and mine have done this,
Athelstan. When the gods combine
they lay plans well indeed I”
“1 only know one God,” he answered
simply, as a man speaks of the deep
things in his heart.
“Il know of many! They love me!
They shall love you, too! Many are
better than one! You shall learn to
know my gods, for we are to be part
pers, you and II"
She took his hand again, her eyes
burning with excitement and mysti-
cism and ambition like a fever. She
seemed to take more thi physical pos-
session of him.
“What brought them here? Tell me
that {* she demanded, pointing to the
bed. “You think he brought her? 1
Were
“Can You Guess Why | Changed My
Mind About You-—Wise Man?"
tell you she was the spur that drove
hima! Is it a wonder that men called
her the ‘Heart of the Hills? 1 found
them ten years ago and clothed her
and put new linen on their bed, for the
old was all rags and dust. There bave
always been hundreds—and sometimes
thousands--who knew the secret of
Khinjan caves, but this has been a
secret within a secret. Someone, who
knew the secret before I, sawed those
bracelets through and fitted hinges
and clasps. The men you saw in the
Barth's Drink have no
Hiug'
thee
She held hig hand a little tighter and
pressed closer to him, laughing softly.
He stood as if made of iron, and that
only made her laugh the more,
“Tales of the ‘Heart of the Hilly
have puzzled the raj, haven't they,
these many years? They sent me to
find the source of them, Me! They
chose well! There are not many like
me! I have found this one dead wom-
an who was like me. And in ten years,
until you came, I have found no man
like him!”
She tried to look into his eyes, but
he frowned straight in front of him,
His native costume and Rangar turban
did not make him seem any less a
man, His jowl, that was beginning to
need shaving, was as grim and as sat-
isfylng as the dead Roman's. She
stroked his left hand with soft fingers,
“lI used to think I knew how to
dance!” she laughed, “For ten years
I have taken those pictures of her for
my model and have striven to learn
what she knew, I have surpassed her!
muse
I
my
, my
hour
myself with men’s dreams-—until
Then 1 dreamed
My dream wa
You have come!
has come!”
Khe tugged his hand.
hers, soul and harness, {if
signs could prove it.
“Come!” she sald, “Is this my hos.
pitality? You sre weary and hungry.
Come I”
She led him by the hand, for it
would have needed brute force to pry
She drew aside the
leather curtain that hung on a bronze
rod near the bed, led him through It,
and let it clash to again behind them.
Now they were In the dark together,
and it was not comprehended in her
scheme of things to let circumstance
Ite fallow. She pressed his hand, and
sighed, and then hurried, whispering
tender words he could scarcely eatch
When they burst together through a
curtain at the other end of a passage
fn the rock, his skin was red under
the tan gnd for the first time her eyes
refused to meet his,
“Why did they choose that cave to
gleep In?" she asked him. “Is not this
a better one? Who laid them there?”
He They were in 8
great room far more splendid than the
first. There was a great fountain In
| the center splashing in the midst of
flowers. They were cut flowers. The
“Hills" must have been scoured for
them within a day.
on
vn account ! s true
Our
at He was
outward
stared about.
¥
There were great cushioned couches
all about and two thrones of
ivory and gold. Between two coud hes
was & table, laden with golden plates
ind a golden jug, on pure white linen
| There were two ets of beaten gold
and ha and
bronze whole room
scent
=
made
enh!
gobi
golds 0
ades. The
seemed to be drenched in the
Yasmini favored, and wa
samme frieze running round
walls, with the woman depicted on
dancing.
“Come, we shall eat!” she
ing him by the hand to a couch.
took the one facing him,
like two Romans of the empire with
the table in between.
knives with ndles
the
there
aii
+
.
said, lead-
She
and they lay
She struck a golden gong then, and
in, stared
nt King as if she had seen him before
and did not like him. Yasmini nodd
to the servant, who clapped her hands.
At once a stream of hillmen,
robed in white, who carried sherbet in
bottles cooled in snow and dishes fra-
| grant with hot food. He recognized
{ his own prisoners from the Mir Khan
Palace jail, and nodded to them
{ they set the things down under the
| maid's direction. When they had fio-
ished eating Yasmin! drove the mail
away with a sharp word; he brought
an ivory footstool and set it about a
yard away from her waxen toes. And
she, watching him with burning eyes,
{ wound tresses of her hair around the
i golden dagger handle, making her jew
els glitter with each movement.
“The gods of India, who are the only
real gods, what do they think of it all!
They have been good to the English
but they have had no thanks, They
will stand aside and watch a
grefter jihad than the world has ever
seen! I love them, and they love me
as you shall love me, too! If they did
not love both of us, we would no
be here! We must obey them!”
None of the East's amazing ways of
courtship are ever tedious, Love
springs into being on an instant and
lives a thousand years inside an hour.
She left no doubt as to her meaning.
She and King were to love, as the Eas
knows love, and then the world might
have just what they two did not care
to take from It.
His only possible course as yet was
the defensive, and there is no defense
like silence. He was still.
“The sirkar,” she went on, “the silly
girkar fears that perhaps Turkey may
enter the war. Perhaps a jihad may
be proclaimed. So much for fear! 1
kndw! I have known for a very long
time! And I have not let fear trouble
me at all!”
Her eyes were on his steadily, and
she read no fear in his, either, for none
was there. In hers he saw ambition
triumph already — excitement — the
gambigr's love of all the hugest risks.
Behind them burned genius and the
devilry that would stop at nothing. As
the general had told him in Peshawur,
she would dare open hades gate and
ride the devil down the Khyber for
the fun of It,
(TO BE CONTINUED.)
Crushed Possibilities.
Jones, the cub reporter, was fat, but
ho looked as melancholy as a fat man
ean yhen he entered the city editor's
office.
“Why was my story killed?” he
asked gloomily
“An act of mercy enld the editor,
a native woman came who
ined
©
came
as
iow
t both
-