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 This deduction led to another. The Hastings party had been attacked. Failing to turn them back, their assailants might have sent word of their approach to Sungan.

"Let's see what I know," mused Gray methodically. "Camel feet armed with guns beaten off by Hastings' caravan—send news to Sungan. Ambuscade prepared at Sungan ruins for Sir Lionel. He walks into it. After attack by lepers, camel feet take up pursuit of him, tracking him back to well, where they engage us." Then the camel feet constituted a kind of outer guard of Sungan. They were poor fighters and seemed to have no heart for their work. The men who had wiped out the caravan were another kind. Sir Lionel had distinctly said they were not armed. They were lepers.

There was then an outer and an inner guard of Sungan. The outer—composed of an indifferent soldiery—had been seen by the missionary Brent. The captive these guards had been pursuing had undoubtedly been a leper, escaped from the colony. Had Brent been done to death by the Chinese who knew what he had seen? If so, then Mary

Gray groaned at the thought and the muscles of his jaw tightened.

"I'm through the outer guards," he forced himself to reason. "But there's one thing that calls for an answer. Why do the Chinese force the lepers to