d: 'Be quick with my trial. I am not
Job!' The Hajji was a learned man. We made the trial swiftly to a sound
of soothing voices round the bed. Yet--yet, because no man can be sure
whether a Sahib of that blood sees, or does not see, we made it strictly
in the manner of the forms of the English Law. Only the witnesses and
the slaves and the prisoner we kept without for his nose's sake."

"Then he did not see the prisoner?" said Strickland.

"I stood by to shackle up an Angari in case he should demand it, but by
God's favour he was too far fevered to ask for one. It is quite true
he signed the papers. It is quite true he saw the money put away in the
safe--two hundred and ten English pounds and it is quite true that the
gold wrought on him as a strong cure. But as to his seeing the prisoner,
and having speech with the man-eaters--the Hajji breathed all that on
his forehead to sink into his sick brain. A little, as ye have heard,
has remained.... Ah, but when the fever broke, and our Sahib called
for the fine-book, and the thin little picture-books from Europe with
the pictures of ploughs and hoes, and cotton=3Dmills--ah, then he
laughed as he used to laugh, Sahib. It was his heart's desire, this
cotton-play. The Hajji loved him, as who does not? It was a little,
little arrangement, Sahib, of which--is it necessary to tell all the
world?"

"And when didst thou know who the Hajji was?" said Strickland.

"Not for a certainty till he and our Sahib had returned from their
visit to the Sheshaheli country. It is quite true as our Sahib says, the
man-eaters lay, flat around his feet, and asked for spades to cultivate
cotton. That very night, when I was cooking the dinner, the Hajji said
to me: 'I go to my own place, though God knows whether the Man with the
Stone Eyes have left me an ox, a slave, or a woman.' I said: 'Thou art
then That One?' The Hajji said: 'I am ten thousand rupees reward into
thy hand. Shall we make another law-case and get more cotton machines
for the boy?' I said: 'What dog am I to do this? May God prolong thy
life a thousand years!' The Hajji said: 'Who has seen to-morrow? God has
given me as it were a son in my old age, and I praise Him. See that the
breed is not lost!'

"He walked then from the cooking-place to our Sahib's office-table under
the tree, where our Sahib held in his hand a blue envelope of Service
newly come in by runner from the North. At this, fearing evil news for
the Hajji, I would h