“They brought me to the forest over there, where you saw me, and the medicine man passed his hands before my eyes, so that I had to do what he said, and keep on moving about in the clearing. He had made me take off my clothing, except for what I have on.” “I see,” nodded Nick. “Go on.” “The medicine man had something in his hand that he kept on putting to his face. It seemed to talk to him.” “Bosh!” growled Jefferson Arnold, below his breath. “You picked it up, did you not?” asked Nick. “Yes. It is still in my hand.” He opened his hand and revealed the curious object that Patsy had described as a stale doughnut. Nick Carter took it in his fingers and shuddered slightly. The thing was the ear of some image. It was about twice the size of a man’s ear, carved elaborately out of gray soapstone. “What is it?” murmured Nick, as a strange feeling, uncanny and enervating, stole throughout his whole being. “It is the ear of one of the little gods of the Land of the Golden Scarab,” rumbled Jai Singh. “When you find the image it belongs to, you will also find Sahib Leslie Arnold.” CHAPTER VIII. READY FOR INVASION. “Well, the thing to do is to push on,” decided Nick Carter briskly, as Jai Singh handed back the soapstone ear to him. “We’ll keep this pretty relic as a sort of cue for what we are to do when we get to the Land of Golden Scarab. Are we on the right road to that interesting place?” “Straight up this river till we get to where it pours out of the sacred rocks among the Himalayas,” replied Jai Singh. “It is on the borders of Nepal, isn’t it?” asked Chick. “Not far from there,” returned Jai Singh. “It would be well to take up the anchor and go on.” “Aren’t we going to have another mix-up with that bunch of coffee-colored robbers over there?” grumbled Patsy. “They have gone away,” Jai Singh told him gravely. “We may meet them when we get to the city beyond the snow. They are not likely to follow us now. No doubt they know a quicker way to get to the place where the Golden Scarab is supreme. But I do not know it. We can only go the way I will show.” The anchor was lifted, and the four oarsmen settled down to their work in the dogged, matter-of-fact manner characteristic of them. It was the middle of the next day when they reached the headwaters of the branch of the famous Ganges up which the boat had been toiling. They had not seen anything of their enemies of the day before, and it seemed as if the men who had been with the medicine man were none too eager to avenge his death. Soon the rest of the journey would have to be done on foot, with the men carrying such supplies as they might need on the way to the home of the Golden Scarab. Although they had neither seen or heard anything of the men belonging to the medicine man who had given them such a lively tussle when the snake charmer met his death, they had a strange sense of being watched, without being able to explain exactly what the feeling was.