between moonset and morning, six weeks before he died; and
I took it down from his mouth as he answered my questions so:--

It lies between the Copper-smith's Gully and the pipe-stem sellers'
quarter, within a hundred yards, too, as the crow flies, of the Mosque
of Wazir Khan. I don't mind telling any one this much, but I defy him
to find the Gate, however well he may think he knows the City. You might
even go through the very gully it stands in a hundred times, and be none
the wiser. We used to call the gully, "the Gully of the Black Smoke,"
but its native name is altogether different of course. A loaded donkey
couldn't pass between the walls; and, at one point, just before you
reach the Gate, a bulged house-front makes people go along all sideways.

It isn't really a gate though. It's a house. Old Fung-Tching had it
first five years ago. He was a boot-maker in Calcutta. They say that
he murdered his wife there when he was drunk. That was why he dropped
bazar-rum and took to the Black Smoke instead. Later on, he came up
north and opened the Gate as a house where you could get your smoke in
peace and quiet. Mind you, it was a pukka, respectable opium-house, and
not one of those stifling, sweltering chandoo-khanas, that you can find
all over the City. No; the old man knew his business thoroughly, and he
was most clean for a Chinaman. He was a one-eyed little chap, not much
more than five feet high, and both his middle fingers were gone. All the
same, he was the handiest man at rolling black pills I have ever seen.
Never seemed to be touched by the Smoke, either; and what he took day
and night, night and day, was a caution. I've been at it five years, and
I can do my fair share of the Smoke with any one; but I was a child to
Fung-Tching that way. All the same, the old man was keen on his money,
very keen; and that's what I can't understand. I heard he saved a good
deal before he died, but his nephew has got all that now; and the old
man's gone back to China to be buried.

He kept the big upper room, where his best customers gathered, as neat
as a new pin. In one corner used to stand Fung-Tching's Joss--almost
as ugly as Fung-Tching--and there were always sticks burning under his
nose; but you never smelt 'em when the pipes were going thick. Opposite
the Joss was Fung-Tching's coffin. He had spent a good deal of his
savings on that, and whenever a new man came to the Gate he was always
introduced to it. It was lacquered b