nce,
and came out of curiosity to find out who you are."

"My name is Professor Schillingschen," he answered, still without
getting up. There was no other chair near the awning, so I had to
remain standing. I told him my name, hoping that Hassan had either not
done so already, or else that he might have so bungled the
pronunciation as to make it unrecognizable. I detected no sign of
recognition on Schillingschen's face.

The boys reached the tent with his breakfast, and one of them dragged a
chair from inside the tent for me. I sat down on it without waiting
for the professor to invite me.

"I'm tired," I said, untruthfully, minded to refuse an invitation to
eat, but interested to see whether he would invite me or not.

"Have you any friends at the hotel?" he asked, looking up at me darkly
under the bushiest eyebrows I ever saw.

"I've got friends wherever I go," I answered. "I make friends."

"Are you going far?" he demanded, holding out a foot for his boy to
pull a stocking on.

"That depends," I said.

"On what?"

"On whether I get employment."

I said that at random, without pausing to think what impression I might
create. He pulled the night-shirt off over his head, throwing the
helmet to the ground, and sat like a great hairy gorilla for the boy to
hang day-clothes on him. He had the hairiest breast and arms I ever
saw, hung with lumpy muscles that heightened his resemblance to an ape.

"I might give you work," he said presently, beginning to eat before the
boy had finished dressing him.

"I want to travel" I said. "If I could find a job that would take me
up and down the length and breadth of this land, that would suit me
finely."

"That is the kind of a man I want," he said, eying me keenly. "I have
a German, but I need an Englishman. Do you speak native languages?"

"Scarcely a word."

To my surprise he nodded approval at that answer.

"I have parties of natives traveling all over the country gathering
folk lore, and ethnographical particulars, but they get into a village
and sit down for whole weeks at a time, drawing pay for doing nothing.
I need an Englishman to go with them and keep them moving."

"All well and good," I said, "but I understand the government is not in
favor of white men traveling about at random."

"But I am known to the government," he answered. "I have been accorded
facilities because of my professional standing. Have you references
you can give me?"