k; he will not last long."

"How do you mean?"

"What I say. He has never, so far, thought about a woman."

"Hasn't he, though!" I remembered some of Charlie's confidences.

"I mean no woman has thought about him. When that comes;
_bus_--_hogya_--all up! I know. There are millions of women here.
Housemaids, for instance."

I winced at the thought of my story being ruined by a housemaid. And yet
nothing was more probable.

Grish Chunder grinned.

"Yes--also pretty girls--cousins of his house, and perhaps not of his
house. One kiss that he gives back again and remembers will cure all
this nonsense, or else----"

"Or else what? Remember he does not know that he knows."

"I know that. Or else, if nothing happens he will become immersed in the
trade and the financial speculations like the rest. It must be so. You
can see that it must be so. But the woman will come first, _I_ think."

There was a rap at the door, and Charlie charged in impetuously. He had
been released from office, and by the look in his eyes I could see
that he had come over for a long talk; most probably with poems in his
pockets. Charlie's poems were very wearying, but sometimes they led him
to talk about the galley.

Grish Chunder looked at him keenly for a minute.

"I beg your pardon," Charlie said, uneasily; "I didn't know you had any
one with you."

"I am going," said Grish Chunder.

He drew me into the lobby as he departed.

"That is your man," he said, quickly. "I tell you he will never speak
all you wish. That is rot-bosh. But he would be most good to make to see
things. Suppose now we pretend that it was only play"--I had never seen
Grish Chunder so excited--"and pour the ink-pool into his hand. Eh, what
do you think? I tell you that he could see _anything_ that a man could
see. Let me get the ink and the camphor. He is a seer and he will tell
us very many things."

"He may be all you say, but I'm not going to trust him to your Gods and
devils."

"It will not hurt him. He will only feel a little stupid and dull when
he wakes up. You have seen boys look into the ink-pool before."

"That is the reason why I am not going to see it any more. You'd better
go, Grish Chunder."

He went, declaring far down the staircase that it was throwing away my
only chance of looking into the future.

This left me unmoved, for I was concerned for the past, and no peering
of hypnotized boys into mirrors and ink-pools would help me do that. But