glass bracelets of all colours,
full of ivory figures, and full of amber and jade ornaments, were piled
in the shelves. Silver bands, embossed in relief with the history of the
Gaudama--the Lord Buddha--stood under glass protection, and everything
that the heart of the touring American or Britisher could desire was to
be had, at a price, in the curio shop of Mhtoon Pah. Umbrellas of all
colours from Bussan; silk from Shantung; carpets from Mirzapore; silver
peacocks, Japanese embroideries, shell-trimmed bags from Shan and
Cochin, all were there; and the wealth of Mhtoon Pah was great.

Everybody knew the curio dealer: he had beguiled and swindled each new
arrival in Mangadone, and his personality helped to make him a very
definite figure in the place. He was a large man, his size accentuated
by his full silk petticoat; a man with large feet, large hands and a
round bullet head, set on a thick neck. He had a few sleek black hairs
at the corners of his mouth, and his long, narrow eyes, with thick
yellow whites and inky-black pupils, never expressed any emotion.
Clothed in strawberry-red silk and a white coat, with a crimson scarf
knotted low over his forehead, he was very nearly as strange and
wonderful a sight as his own shop of myriad wares, and his manner was at
all times the manner of a Grand Duke. Mhtoon Pah was as well known as
the pointing effigy outside, but, whereas the world in the street
believed they knew what the wooden man pointed at, no one could ever
tell what Mhtoon Pah saw, and no one knew except Mhtoon Pah himself.

All day long Mhtoon Pah sat inside his shop on a low divan and smoked
cheroots, and only when a customer was of sufficient importance did he
ever rise to conduct a sale himself. He was assisted by a thin, eager
boy, a native Christian from Ootacamund, who had followed several trades
before he became the shop assistant of Mhtoon Pah. He was useful
because he could speak English, and he had been dressing-boy to a
married Sahib who lived in a big house at the end of the Cantonment,
therefore he knew something of the ways of Mem-Sahibs; and he had taken
a prize at the Sunday school, therefore Absalom was a boy of good
character, and was known very nearly as well as Mhtoon Pah himself.

It was a hot, stifling evening, the evening of July the 29th. The rains
had lashed the country for days, and even the trees that grew in among
the houses of Paradise Street were fresh and green, though one of th