half
of the earth to which he and others like him went swaggering as
conquerors and masters. He would have to demonstrate which of the
various ways and ways and just how seriously he was going to take this
ancient people and their self-sufficing and queerly keyed formulas, so
strange and vivid and charming. And whether he was going to be laid
under some kind of psychic blackmail every time he chose to snatch a
delicious interpretation.

If he meant to be quite sure of that essential white superiority of
this, the time had come to make it good.

He smiled again as he swung the right lapel of his twill jacket a little
farther to the right....

"Moung Poh Sin," he began, almost amiably, "with the rest of these
matters which seem so well and so fully known to thee, is it also known
where I have been since I went away?"

"No, Shway."

"Now, as it chanced, I went to the Salween country; even up into Yunnan,
the Cloudy South. And there, in those wild parts, I hunted the painted
leopard and the fishing cat and the tiger cat and other such, as I have
done before.... Thou hast seen me shoot?"

"Yes, Shway."

"Rememberest thou, perhaps, how once at Apyodaw in a merry mood, to show
my skill and for a jest, I shot away one by one the six strings from a
minstrel's harp?"

"Yes, Shway."

"And again, how with the short gun I slew a pigeon on a housetop and
tore the head from its body?"

"Yes, Shway."

"Then, for the third and the last time, I warn thee to get clear of that
door and of me--and to keep clear, Moung Poh Sin. I have been patient
and tolerant, marveling too much at thy insolence to be rightly angered.
But I have had enough. By every law of the land and by common privilege
of my kind, thy life is forfeit to me for daring to breathe these
threats. And it was a pity of thy cunning, and a flaw in thy
information, not to have learned whence I came--and whether I would be
likely to come from a place like Yunnan unarmed, Moung Poh Sin!"

But Moung Poh Sin did not stir.

"That can make no change, Shway. My own life is of no moment, and thine
is surely forfeit, as I told thee--here by the Slanted Beam when the sun
sets. What will be will be. It is written."

Whereupon Cloots very quickly and expertly fired once from the hip. The
shot burst with a racketing smash against the eardrums. To any on the
platform it might have just sounded as a clap of hands, no louder. But
within these solid blank walls it multiplied l