nd stood rocking his huge
body, tamping the ground with his feet as if still travelling. The
mahout on his neck spoke to him patiently:

"Now will my master use his intelligence to understand that we have
arrived?"

Then turning to the men on the ground, the strange mahout said
wistfully:

"Look on me with compassion, oh men of honour and of fame! I have
heard of you, but you have not heard of me."

"We have heard of you, that you are the making of a master-mahout, in
due time," answered Kudrat Sharif.

"Then the gods who preserved my fathers to old age, have not forgotten
that I learned patience in my extreme youth," sighed the man.

Seeing that the elephant was not quieting, Kudrat Sharif spoke now in
pacifying tones--to the mahout:

"Come down among us who are your brothers; we have prepared all things
for your refreshment."

"I will come down with a full heart and an empty stomach, most
beneficent, when this Majesty will permit," the strange mahout assented
wearily.

"Is he rough, son--to sit?" asked the very old man, coming closer.

The elephant shied a step and his mahout cuddled one ear with his
fingers, as he replied:

"He is the smoothest thing that ever moved upon the surface of the
earth--like a wind driven by fiends. But he never stops."

The elephant was rolling more widely if anything, than at first; so the
mahouts stood back a little and considered him.

His blackness was like very old bronze, with certain metallic gleams in
it--like time-veiled copper and brass. His flawless frame was covered
with tight-banded muscle. There was no appearance of fat. His skin
was smooth--without wrinkles. He was young; about forty years, or
less. But there was the nick of a tusk-stroke in one ear; and a small
red devil in his eye.

Without warning, he flicked his mahout off his neck and set him
precisely on the ground--the movement so quick no eye could follow his
trunk as it did it.

The youngest mahout brought a sheaf of tender branches--such as are
most desirable--and laid them near, but not too near; and when the
elephant began to eat, they removed the burden of his mahout's
possessions from his back.

Then the man received their ministrations--keeping an eye on the
elephant. When he was ready to smoke, he began slowly:

"Ram Yaksahn is my name; and my ancestors--from the first far breath of
tradition--have been servants of the elephant people. We were of High
Himalaya till the man wh