order to draw his breath.

"Steady, now!"

The men were lined out in single file, each with his two hands on the
rope. Not half of them were really needed to lift such a wizened load as
the fakir, but Brown was doing nothing without thought, and wasting not
an effort. He wanted each man to be occupied, and even amused. He wanted
the audience, whom he could not see, but who he knew were all around him
in the shadows, to get a full view of what was happening. They might
not have seen so clearly, had he allowed one-half of the men to be
lookers-on.

"Steady!" he repeated. "Be sure and let him breathe, until I give the
word." Then he seized the cowering Beluchi by the neck, and dragged him
up close beside the fakir. "Translate, you!" he ordered. "To the crowd
out yonder first. Shout to 'em, and be careful to make no mistakes."

"Speak, then, sahib! What shall I say?"

"Say this. This most sacred person here is our prisoner. He will die the
moment any one attempts to rescue him."

The Beluchi translated, and repeated word for word.

"I will now talk with him, and he himself will talk with you, and thus
we will come to an arrangement!"'

There was a commotion in the shadows, and somewhere in the neighborhood
of fifty men appeared, keeping at a safe distance still, but evidently
anxious to get nearer.

"Now talk to the fakir, and not so loudly! Ask him 'Are you a sacred
person?' Ask him softly, now!"

"He says 'Yes,' sahib, 'I am sacred!"'

"Do you want to die?"

"All men must die!"

The answer made an opening for an interminable discussion, of the kind
that fakirs and their kindred love. But Brown was not bent just then on
dissertation. He changed his tactics.

"Do you want to die, a little slowly, before all those obedient
worshipers of yours, and in such a way that they will see and understand
that you can not help yourself, and therefore are a fraud?"

The Beluchi repeated the question in the guttural tongue that apparently
the fakir best understood. In the fitful light cast by the burning
roofs, it was evident that the fakir had been touched in the one weak
spot of his armor.

There can scarcely be more than one reason why a man should torture
himself and starve himself and maim and desecrate and horribly defile
himself. At first sight, the reason sounds improbable, but consideration
will confirm it. It is vanity, of an iron-bound kind, that makes the
wandering fakir.

"Ask him again!" said Brown.