Ramsa Lal removed his arm, saw that she could stand unsupported, and bent forward over the unconscious man. Following a rapid examination, he signed to her to leave the tent. They came out into the white blaze of the moonlight--and there at their feet lay the glittering loot of the haunted temple, a dazzlement of rainbow sparks. "Only for such a thing as this," said Ramsa Lal, "dare I go, but not one of us will see another dawn if we do not go." He pointed to the heap of treasure. "Mem Sahib must come also." "But--my husband----" "He must remain," he said. "It is of his own choosing." V The temple stood in a kind of clearing. Grotesquely horrible figures guarded the time-worn entrance. Moreen drew a deep breath of relief on emerging from the jungle path by which, amid the rustle of retreating snakes, they had come, but shrank back affrighted from the blackness of the ruined doorway. Ramsa Lal stood the lantern upon the stump of a broken pillar, where its faint yellow light was paled by the moon-rays. "It is _you_ who must restore," he said. One by one he handed her the jewel-encrusted vessels and hung the ropes of rubies upon her arm. She nodded, and as Ramsa Lal took up the lantern and began to descend the steps within followed him. "No foot save his," came back to her, "has trod these sacred steps for ages, for the secret of the jungle path is known only to the few...." "How do you--know the way?" Ramsa Lal did not reply. They traversed a short tunnel; a heavy door was thrust open; and Moreen found herself standing in a small pillared hall. Through a window high in one wall, overgrown with tangled vegetation, crept a broken moonbeam. Directly before her was the carven figure of a grotesque deity. A long, heavily clamped chest stood before it like an altar step. She staggered forward, deposited her priceless burden upon the floor, and mechanically began to raise the lid of the chest. "Not that one, Mem Sahib!" The voice of Ramsa Lal rose shrilly--"not that one!..." But he spoke too late. Moreen realised that there were three divisions in the chest, each having a separate lid. As she raised the one in the centre, a breath of fetid air greeted her nostrils, and she had a vague impression that this was no chest but the entrance to a deep pit. Then all these thoughts were swept away by the crowning horror which rose out of the subterranean darkness. A great winged creature, clammily white, rose towards her, passed beneath her upraised hands and sailed into the darkness on the right. She heard it flapping its great bat wings against the wall--heard them beating upon a pillar--then saw it coming back towards her into the moonlight--and knew no more. VI "Mem Sahib!" Moreen opened her eyes. She lay, propped against a saddle, at the camp beside the jungle. She shuddered icily. "Ramsa Lal--how----" "I carried the Mem Sahib! the treasures of the temple I restored to their resting-place----" "And the--the other----"