of Lao-tsze who had repaired to the cavern to partake of the miraculous draught, which they were just about to do.  They were, it appeared, mother and daughter, and I distinctly remember that the composition of the beverage was known to the daughter only.  This impressed me, for I should naturally have expected the contrary.  The tiger escorted me home.  I forswore hunting, and became, and have secretly continued, a disciple of Lao-tsze.  I will now indicate the position of the cavern to thee:  whether the ladies will still be found in it is beyond my power to say.”

And having pointed out the direction of the cavern, he expired.

The thing had to be done.  The Bonze dressed himself up as much like a votary of Lao-tsze as possible, provided himself with a body-guard of bona fide disciples, and, accompanied by a small army of huntsmen and warriors as well, marched in quest of the den of the tiger.  It was discovered about nightfall, and having tethered a small boy near the entrance, that his screams when being devoured might give notice of the tiger’s issue from or return to his habitation, the Bonze and his myrmidons took up a flank position and awaited the dawn.  The distant howls of roaming beasts of prey entirely deprived the holy man of his rest, but nothing worse befell him, and when in the morning the small boy, instead of providing the tiger with a breakfast, was heard crying for his own, the besiegers mustered up courage to enter the cavern.  The glare of their torches revealed no tiger:  but, to the Bonze’s inexpressible delight, two females lay on the floor of the cave, corresponding in all respects to the description of the old man.  Their costume was that of the preceding century.  One was wrinkled and hoary; the inexpressible loveliness of the other, who might have seen seventeen or eighteen summers, extorted a universal cry of admiration, followed by a hush of enraptured silence.  Warm, flexible, fresh in colour, breathing naturally as in slumber, the figures lay, the younger woman’s arm underneath the elder woman’s neck, and her chin nestling on the other’s shoulder.  The countenance of each seemed to indicate happy dreams.

“Can this indeed be but a trance?” simultaneously questioned several of the Bonze’s followers.

“Fiat experimentum in corpore vili!” exclaimed the Bonze; and he thrust his long hunting spear into the elder woman’s bosom.  Blood poured forth freely, but there was no change in the expression of the countenance.  No struggle announced dissolution; not until the body grew chill and the limbs stiff could they be sure the old woman was indeed dead.

“Carry the young woman like porcelain,” ordered the priest, and like the most fragile porcelain the exquisite young beauty was borne from the cavern smiling in her trance and utterly unconscious, while the corpse of her aged companion was abandoned to the hyaenas.  So often did the bearers pause to look on her beauty that it was found necessary to drape the countenance entirely, until reaching the closed sedan in which, vigilantly watched by the Bonze, she was transported to the Imperial palace.