ifferent country from India, with its
blazing sun and great bare plains; there the people seldom has a smile
on them. Here they are always laughing; here all is green and
beautiful, with fine aisy times for flowers and birds and beasts.
There's peace and kindness. Oh! it's a fine change from knocking about
in barracks and cantonments, drilling and route-marching and sweating
your soul out. By the way, have ye the talisman I give you?"

"If you mean the brown stone--yes."

"That stone was slipped into my begging-bowl one day."

"Not much of a find as an eatable!"

"That is so, though according to fairy tales the likes has dropped out
of people's mouths before now. Ye may not suspicion the truth, but
it's a fine big ruby! I believe it was found stuck in red mud in the
ruby district, and someone who had a wish for me dropped it into the
_patta_, and I--who have a wish for you--pass it on."

"But if it is so valuable I could not dream of accepting such a gift,"
protested Shafto. "You will have to take it back--thanks awfully, all
the same."

"Oh, ye never rightly know the price of them stones till they are cut;
but the knowledgeable man I showed it to said it might be worth a
couple of thousand pounds, and I've come to tell ye this--so that ye
can turn it into coin--and if ye wanted to get out of Burma, there ye
are!"

"That _is_ most awfully good of you, but I really could not think of
accepting your treasure, or its value in money--and I have no wish to
leave Burma, the country suits me all right."

As he ceased speaking Shafto got up, unlocked a leather dispatch box
and produced the ruby, which he placed in the large, well-kept hand of
the visitor.

"Well, now, I call this entirely too bad!" the latter exclaimed as he
turned it over. "An' I need not tell ye that I can make no use of the
ruby, being vowed to poverty--which you are not; and I want to offer
some small return for what ye did for me last time I was down in
Rangoon. I can't think what ails ye to be so stiff-necked; is there
nothing at all I can do for ye?"

"Well, Mung Baw, since you put it like that, I believe you could give
me what would be far more use than a stone--some valuable help."

"Valuable help!" repeated the _pongye_, adjusting false horn spectacles
and staring hard. "Then as far as it's in me power the help of every
bone in me body is yours and at your service."

"Thank you. Now, tell me, have you ever heard of the cocaine