he man he had just left. There had been no need
for Coryndon to question him about Mrs. Wilder: her secret mission to
the river interested him no further. Heath had protected her and had
kept silence where her name was concerned, and yet she chose to belittle
him in her idle, insolent fashion.

He thought of Heath sitting by the bed of the dying woman, and he
thought of him following the wake of the _Lady Helen_ down the dark
river with sad, sorrowful eyes, and through the thought there came a
strange thrill to his own soul, because he touched the hem of the
garment of the Everlasting Mercy, hidden away, pushed out of life, and
forgotten in garrulous hours full of idle chatter.

Yet Mrs. Wilder had announced with her regal finality no less than three
times in the hearing of Coryndon the previous evening that the Rev.
Francis Heath was "a bore."

XIX

IN WHICH LEH SHIN WHISPERS A STORY INTO THE EAR OF SHIRAZ, THE PUNJABI;
THE BURDEN OF WHICH IS: "HAVE I FOUND THEE, O MINE ENEMY?"

A man with a grievance, however silent he may be by nature, is,
generally speaking, voluble upon the subject of his wrongs, real or
imaginary; but a man with a grudge is intrinsically different. An old
grudge or an old hate are silent things, because they have deep roots
and do not require attention, and it is only in flashes of sudden
feeling, or when the means to the end is in view, that the man with a
grudge reveals details and tells his story. Shiraz paid several visits
to, and spent some time in the shop of, Leh Shin before he arrived at
what he wanted to know.

He went also to Mhtoon Pah's shop, but came away without discovering
anything. Into the ears of Hartley, Head of the Police, the Burman raged
and screamed his passionate hate, because he believed it promoted his
object; but to the Punjabi he was smooth and complaisant, and refused to
be drawn into any admission. Leh Shin, the Chinaman, was Bazaar dust to
his dignity, and he knew naught of him, save only that the man had an
evil name earned by evil deeds, and Shiraz, who was as crafty as Mhtoon
Pah, saw that he had come to a "no thoroughfare" and turned his wits
towards Leh Shin.

Little by little, and without any apparent motive, he worked the
Chinaman up to the point where silence is agony, and at last, as a river
in flood crashes over the mud-banks, the whole tale of his wrongs came
bursting through his closed mouth, and with the sweat pouring down his
yellow fac