autious. I never take any liberties with even a blind and spavined
derelict.

"What d'ye want to find?" he bluntly asked, after we had ridden the
better part of five minutes in silence.

"A disabled Burmese," was the reply. "I trust to find some part of his
upper-works in a more or less damaged condition."

"Burmese!" he echoed in an exclamation. "Good. I win. Larrimer bet
me a five he was a Javanese." The doctor sniffed scornfully, "Devilish
lot Larrimer knows about ethnology." He then became lucid.

"Larrimer's head at the Drevel Hospital, y' know; deuced clever at the
operating-table, but set in his ideas. Lord, dynamite would n't move
him; stubborn's no name for it.

"Your Burmese is there: triple fracture of the left parietal, left
clavicle and bladebone badly crushed; trephined him last night. Beggar
'll die."

"It certainly sounds serious enough," commented I. "Is the parietal a
part of his upper-works?"

He jabbed with the tip of one gloved finger the side of my head nearest
him, which happened to be the right.

"That's your right parietal," he explained; "the left one 's on the
other side."

"Thank Heaven for sending you across my path this day!"--fervently.
"That's my man."

The doctor was a good deal of a scoffer. "Heaven had nothing to do
with it," said he, with unnecessary asperity. "I knew you 'd be
wanting to see him; I was hunting for you. Beggar speaks English
fairly well, and he let out a word or two that made me think he knew
something you ought to know. . . . Whoa! Jump out!"

We entered the hospital, and soon were at the bedside of the dying man.
The operation had relieved the brain from the pressure of the fractured
skull, and the man's wanderings were interspersed with rational
periods, during which his story was taken down in shorthand, with
infinite difficulty, by the hospital's stenographer. I have taken the
liberty of preparing a summary from the long rambling account,
sufficient to show my justification for anticipating that the case was
on the eve of taking an unexpected turn, and to satisfy the curious
respecting certain aspects of the ruby's history.

The man, whose name was Chaya, was a priest of the temple at Tounghain,
Upper Burma, "where the sublime Da-Fou-Jan sits in eternal meditation
among the thousand caverns that lie beyond Mandalay." His companions
were also priests, and Tshen-byo-yen was a wealthy noble of the
district, whose family was accountab