ib! None
had--none could--touch him. Since they were in pairs, and the other of
the Fork was mad and sang foolishly, we waited for some heathen to do
what was needful. There came at last Angari men with goats. The Hajji
said: 'What do ye see? They said: 'Oh, our Lord, we neither see nor
hear.' The Hajji said: 'But I command ye to see and to hear and to say.'
They said: 'Oh, our Lord, it is to our commanded eyes as though slaves
stood in a Fork.' The Hajji said: 'So testify before the officer who
waits you in the town of Dupe.' They said: 'What shall come to us
after?' The Hajji said: 'The just reward for the informer. But if ye do
not testify, then a punishment which shall cause birds, to fall from
the trees in terror and monkeys to scream for pity.' Hearing this,
the Angari men hastened to Dupe. The Hajji then said to me: 'Are those
things sufficient to establish our case, or must I drive in a village
full?' I said that three witnesses amply established any case, but as
yet, I said, the Hajji had not offered his slaves for sale. It is true,
as our Sahib said just now, there is one fine for catching slaves, and
yet another for making to sell them. And it was the double fine that
we needed, Sahib, for our Sahib's cotton-play. We had fore-arranged
all this with Bulaki Ram, who knows the English Law, and, I thought the
Hajji remembered, but he grew angry, and cried out: 'O God, Refuge of
the Afflicted, must I, who am what I am, peddle this dog's meat by the
roadside to gain his delight for my heart's delight?' None the less, he
admitted it was the English Law, and so he offered me the six--five--in
a small voice, with an averted head. The Sheshaheli do not smell of sour
milk as heathen should. They smell like leopards, Sahib. This is because
they eat men."

"Maybe," said Strickland. "But where were thy wits? One witness is not
sufficient to establish the fact of a sale."

"What could we do, Sahib? There was the Hajji's reputation to consider.
We could not have called in a heathen witness for such a thing. And,
moreover, the Sahib forgets that the defendant himself was making this
case. He would not contest his own evidence. Otherwise, I know the law
of evidence well enough.

"So then we went to Dupe, and while Bulaki Ram waited among the Angari
men, 'I ran to see our Sahib in bed. His eyes were very bright, and his
mouth was full of upside-down orders, but the old woman had not loosened
her hair for death. The Hajji sai