h; and secondly, that the
forearm of a Chinaman is surprisingly muscular and well-developed.
"What's going to be done?" "Nothing. There are only three of us, and all
the ringleaders would get away. We've got 'em safe any time we want to
catch 'em, if this little visit doesn't make 'em shift their quarters.
Hi! John. No pidgin to-night. Show how you makee play. That fat
youngster there is our informer."

Half the pigtails have fled into the darkness, but the remainder assured
and trebly assured that the Police really mean "no pidgin," return to
the table and stand round while the croupier manipulates the cowries,
the little curved slip of bamboo, and the soup-bowl. They never gamble,
these innocents. They only come to look on, and smoke opium in the next
room. Yet as the game progresses their eyes light up, and one by one put
their money on odd or even--the number of the cowries that are covered
and left uncovered by the little soup-bowl. _Mythan_ is the name of the
amusement, and, whatever may be its demerits, it is clean. The Police
look on while their charge plays and loots a parchment-skinned
horror--one of Swift's Struldburgs, strayed from Laputa--of the enormous
sum of two annas. The return of this wealth, doubled, sets the loser
beating his forehead against the table from sheer gratitude.

"Most immoral game this. A man might drop five whole rupees, if he began
playing at sun-down and kept it up all night. Don't you ever play whist
occasionally?"

"Now, we didn't bring you round to make fun of this department. A man
can lose as much as ever he likes and he can fight as well, and if he
loses all his money he steals to get more. A Chinaman is insane about
gambling, and half his crime comes from it. It _must_ be kept down. Here
we are in Bentinck Street and you can be driven to the Great Eastern in
a few minutes. Joss houses? Oh, yes. If you want more horrors,
Superintendent Lamb will take you round with him to-morrow afternoon at
five. Good night."

The Police depart, and in a few minutes the silent respectability of Old
Council House Street, with the grim Free Kirk at the end of it, is
reached. All good Calcutta has gone to bed, the last tram has passed,
and the peace of the night is upon the world. Would it be wise and
rational to climb the spire of that kirk, and shout: "O true believers!
Decency is a fraud and a sham. There is nothing clean or pure or
wholesome under the stars, and we are all going to perdit