"Been through it? Have you really? How long ago?" "From end to end. A couple of days after we came up here." "But did you know the tradition?" "Yes. Haslam told me. I questioned Mehrab Khan about it, and he is a firm believer in it. In fact, all the people are. That's the reason I sent him on to the camp now. I didn't want him to know what we were going to do, if only that there's nothing to be gained by jumping with both feet upon other people's prejudices, especially natives'. And these might look upon it as a desecration." "Has Mr Haslam been through it himself?" Raynier whistled, then laughed. "Haslam! Why, he'd about as soon go into it as Mehrab Khan." "Really, Mr Raynier, I couldn't have believed you people out here were so superstitious. You are as bad as the natives themselves. I suppose you get it from them." "`You'? Count me out, please. Didn't I just say I'd been through the place? I'm doomed anyhow, you see," he added banteringly, "but there's no reason why you should be. So now we'll get back to camp." "No. I want to go through it too." "Quite sure you won't feel uncomfortable about it afterwards?" he said. "You might, you know." But a strange expression had come over her face, the set, far-away look of one whose thoughts were not with her words. In after times that look came back to him. "I want to go through it too," she repeated. "Very well, then--you've been warned." As they entered the grim portal the sun was just touching the horizon, but it occurred to neither of them that it might be pitch dark before they emerged. At first the slant of the rock walls caused one of these to overhang, shutting out the sky, but the rift gradually widening, they could see the brow of these stupendous cliffs, far above against the sky at a dizzy height. Unconsciously the tones of both were lowered as they conversed. "It isn't healthy taking too long to get through a _tangi_ like this when there are rain storms going about," Raynier was saying. "It makes a most effective waterway for ten, twenty, forty feet of flood. Ah, I thought so. Look." High over their heads, caught here and there in a crevice of the rock, was a wisp of withered grass or a few sticks. There was no mistaking how these objects had got there, and the awful magnitude of the flood which at times bellowed through this grisly rift. "Why is the place supposed to be haunted?" said Hilda Clive. "You didn't tell me."