court, she was, by some terrible mistake, received with insult
and offered the position only of one of his women. After that
nothing was known. Certain only is it that he fled to the hills,
to the home of his broken hope, and there ended his days in
solitude, save for the attendance of two faithful friends who
would not abandon him even in the ghostly quiet of the winter
when the pine boughs were heavy with snow and a spectral moon
stared at the panthers shuffling through the white wastes
beneath. Of these two Rup Singh's ancestor was one. And in his
thirty fifth year the Maharao died and his beauty and strength
passed into legend and his kingdom was taken by another and the
jungle crept silently over his Hall of Pleasure and the story
ended.

"There was not a memory of the place up there," Olesen went on.
"Certainly I never heard anything of it when I went up to the
Shipki in 1904. But I had been able to be useful to Rup Singh and
he gave me a permit for The House in the Woods, and I stopped
there for a few days' shooting. I remember that day so well. I
was wandering in the dense woods while my men got their midday
grub, and I missed the trail somehow and found myself in a part
where the trees were dark and thick and the silence heavy as
lead. It was as if the trees were on guard - they stood shoulder
to shoulder and stopped the way. Well, I halted, and had a notion
there was something beyond that made me doubt whether to go on. I
must have stood there five minutes hesitating. Then I pushed on,
bruising the thick ferns under my shooting boots and stooping
under the knotted boughs. Suddenly I tramped out of the jungle
into a clearing, and lo and behold a ruined House, with blocks of
marble lying all about it, and carved pillars and a great roof