Neither Muriel, absorbed in watching the wedding, nor the two men engrossed in their dispute had noticed the Chinese come riding along the road and pulling up when they saw the peasants gathered together. One of them had been about to question the villagers from his saddle when his eyes fell on the disguised girl standing apart from the crowd. He stared at her for a few moments. Then he spoke hurriedly to his companions, and, springing from the mule's back seized Muriel in a rough grasp. At her cry Frank ran back, forgetting his disguise. He recognised in her assailant the pock-marked officer of the _Amban_. The man, seeing him coming, drew a revolver; but Wargrave whipped out his pistol quicker and without hesitation shot him through the heart. The Chinaman collapsed to the ground and in his fall dragged the girl down. His comrade fired at his slayer and, missing him, wheeled his mule round and galloped off. Tashi returned the shot while Frank ran to Muriel. He fired several times and the rider was apparently hit; for he fell forward on the neck of his animal; but 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.