"You explained that you had done it in ignorance?"
"Of course. But"—he smiled rather cynically—"they had evidently heard that before. You know the Americans who got into trouble there had really laid a plot to carry away some memento of their visit, and they thought we were after loot of some kind, too, I suppose."
"They wouldn't listen?"
"Oh, yes, they listened all right while I tried, with Miss Ryder's help, to explain. She knew a few words of their tongue, and somehow a situation of that sort sharpens one's wits to the extent of helping one to understand a strange lingo. The upshot was we were blindfolded"—he saw Cheniston wince at the thought of the indignity to the girl he had loved—"and led away. Later we were placed in a conveyance of some sort, a bullock cart, I imagine, and driven for hours over some of the worst ground I've ever struck."
"Well?" The interest of the story was gripping the other man through all his horror, and his tone had lost its hostility for the moment. "And then?"
"Finally we were released, led into a small hut, our eyes were unbandaged, and we were informed that our fate was being deliberated, and the result would be made known to us at sunset."
"And at sunset——"
"At sunset we were sent for to the presence of a still more important personage, another High Priest, I suppose. We were taken into a kind of presence chamber, across the large courtyard, and found our friends of the morning, kow-towing to this still higher potentate. He didn't waste words on us. Through the miserable creature who had interpreted for us earlier, he made us understand that the penalty for setting foot in their holy place was death—by strangulation as a general rule——"
Cheniston's lips turned white, and his cigarette dropped to the floor; but though Anstice saw his agitation he paid no attention.
"But in consideration of the fact that we were English and one of us was a woman"—Cheniston uttered an involuntary exclamation—"our sentence was that we should be shot in the courtyard at sunrise."