he recovered himself and, crouching low, was still
in the saddle when a turn in the road hid him from sight.

The startled villagers scattered and fled in terror at the tragedy
suddenly enacted in their midst, the six cowardly husbands deserting
their new-made wife and leaving her to follow as they ran away, which
she did at her utmost speed.

Frank freed Muriel from the stiffened grasp of the dead man and helped
her to her feet; then the three hurried from the fatal spot, so lately
filled by a cheerful crowd of merrymakers and now tenanted only by the
corpse that lay with sightless eyes staring up at the blue sky. They
made for the shelter of jungle-clad hills that rose a couple of miles
away.

From now onwards, for two or three weeks, the fugitives led the lives of
hunted rats. They travelled generally only by night, avoiding villages
and farms, and keeping away from the road as much as possible. They were
in the southern zone of Bhutan lying nearest the Indian frontier, a
region of precipitous hills ten or twelve thousand feet high, their
sides clothed with dense vegetation, of deep, fever-laden valleys of
awe-inspiring gorges, of rivers liable to sudden floods and rising in a
few hours thirty or forty feet.

Tashi in various disguises occasionally visited villages in search of
food and information; while the lovers awaited his return in some hidden
spot, Frank holding the anxious girl in his arms and trying to calm her
fears. In one excursion the ex-lama got the first definite news of the
pursuit. He learned that the _Amban_ had returned unexpectedly to Tuna,
the plot in his favour in Pekin having failed. He was not satisfied by
the tales told by the monks of the lamasery to account for Muriel's
mysterious disappearance, which was that she had been carried off by
devils. He insisted on a search being made for her along the road to the
Indian border and sent his own Chinese guards to direct the pursuit. The
companion of the pock-marked man had got back to Tuna and told of their
recognition of her. Yuan Shi Hung, furious at the death of his officer
but overjoyed at the discovery of the girl, set out at once with his
personal followers and a body of the Penlop's soldiers to take up the
chase.

The fugitives, hotly pursued, had several hair-breadth escapes. Once
they almost blundered into a bivouac of their enemies at night. They
succeeded at last in reaching the great forest in which Wargrave and the
ex-lama had