Do you take me for a
tourist? Look up in those trees and you will see monkeys that know
boiled rice from padi."

The man grinned and showed his brilliantly red teeth and gums.

"Tuan see. This monkey very wise," and he made a motion with his
stick. The little fellow sprang from the railing to his bare head,
and sat holding on to his long black hair.

"See, Tuan," and he made another motion, and the monkey leaped to
the ground and commenced to run around his master, hopping first
on one foot and then on the other, raising his arms over his head
like a ballet dancer. After every revolution he would stop and turn
a handspring.

The Malay all the time kept up a droning kind of a song in his native
tongue, improvising as he went along.

The tenor of it was that one Hamat, a poor Malay, but a good
Mohammedan, who had never been to Mecca, wanted to go to become a
Hadji. He had no money but he had a good monkey that was very dear
to him. He had found it in a distant jungle, beyond Johore, when a
little baby; had brought it up like one of his own children and had
taught it to dance and salaam.

Now he must sell the monkey to the great Tuan, or Lord, that the
money might help take him to Mecca. The monkey must dance well and
please the mighty Tuan.

As the little fellow danced, he kept one eye on me as though he
understood it all.

"How old is he?" I asked, becoming interested.

"Just as old as your Excellency would like," he replied, bowing.

"Is he a year old?"

"If the Tuan please."

"Well, how much do you want for him?"

"What your Excellency can give."

"Twenty-five dollars?" I asked.

His face lit up from chin to forehead. He hitched nervously at the
folds of his sarong, and changed the quid of red betel-nut from one
corner of his mouth to the other.

"Here, Hamat," I said, laughing, "here is five dollars; take it;
when you come back from Mecca with a green turban come and see me. If
I am sick of the monkey, you can have him back."

So commenced our acquaintance with Lepas. We got into the habit
of calling him Lepas, because it was the Malay for "let go," which
definition we broadened until it became a term of correction for every
form of mischief. He was such a restless, active little imp, with
hands into everything and upon everything, that it was "Lepas!" from
morning to night.

He soon learned the word's twofold meaning. If we said "Lepas" sternly,
he subsided at once; but when we called it ple