ractical purposes, the old Arabian
Nights are good guides, went forward to the window, and whispered that
verse of "The Love Song of Har Dyal" which begins:

Can a man stand upright in the face of the naked Sun;
or a Lover in the Presence of his Beloved?
If my feet fail me, O Heart of my Heart, am I to blame,
being blinded by the glimpse of your beauty?

There came the faint tchinks of a woman's bracelets from behind the
grating, and a little voice went on with the song at the fifth verse:

Alas! alas! Can the Moon tell the Lotus of her love when the
Gate of Heaven is shut and the clouds gather for the rains?
They have taken my Beloved, and driven her with the pack-horses
to the North.
There are iron chains on the feet that were set on my heart.
Call to the bowman to make ready--

The voice stopped suddenly, and Trejago walked out of Amir Nath's Gully,
wondering who in the world could have capped "The Love Song of Har Dyal"
so neatly.

Next morning, as he was driving to the office, an old woman threw a
packet into his dog-cart. In the packet was the half of a broken
glass bangle, one flower of the blood red dhak, a pinch of bhusa or
cattle-food, and eleven cardamoms. That packet was a letter--not a
clumsy compromising letter, but an innocent, unintelligible lover's
epistle.

Trejago knew far too much about these things, as I have said. No
Englishman should be able to translate object-letters. But Trejago
spread all the trifles on the lid of his office-box and began to puzzle
them out.

A broken glass-bangle stands for a Hindu widow all India over; because,
when her husband dies a woman's bracelets are broken on her wrists.
Trejago saw the meaning of the little bit of the glass. The flower
of the dhak means diversely "desire," "come," "write," or "danger,"
according to the other things with it. One cardamom means "jealousy;"
but when any article is duplicated in an object-letter, it loses its
symbolic meaning and stands merely for one of a number indicating time,
or, if incense, curds, or saffron be sent also, place. The message ran
then:--"A widow dhak flower and bhusa--at eleven o'clock." The pinch of
bhusa enlightened Trejago. He saw--this kind of letter leaves much
to instinctive knowledge--that the bhusa referred to the big heap of
cattle-food over which he had fallen in Amir Nath's Gully, and that the
message must come from the person behind the grating; she being