tence, loose when Mhtoon
Pah was in the shop, but chained to the wall whenever he went out, and
only for an hour after midnight was the boy ever allowed to emerge into
the dark, waste garden at the back of the house. The rest of the time
was spent in the cell, and Absalom broke into incoherent wailing as he
called Hartley and Coryndon to witness that it had been a hard life.

As the end of his story approached, Absalom grew more dramatic and
quoted the parting words of Mhtoon Pah before he went out to attend the
_Pwe_ at the Pagoda.

"I leave thee in fear," said he, "for thou art the apple of my eye, O
Absalom, and when I am gone some calamity may befall. From whence it
comes I know not, but as men look at the heaped clouds behind the hills
and say, 'Lo, it will soon fall in rain,' so does my heart look out and
observe darkness, and I am ill-satisfied to quit this house."

His words rang in the mind of the boy, shut into the stifling darkness
below the ground, and he remembered that he cried out for help, not once
but over and over again, and that his cries were eventually answered by
the voice of Leh Shin, who had called him a child of vipers and
threatened to enter and break him against the wall as he would a
plantain. After that Absalom had refrained from crying out, and had
waited silently expecting the door to open and admit Leh Shin and his
last moment simultaneously. Upon the silence came the sounds of
scuffling and hoarse cries, and it seemed to Absalom that Leh Shin had
called out that he had already cut the heart from his ribs, and was
about to force it down Mhtoon Pah's throat, and then nothing was very
clear until voices and lights roused him from stupor to fresh terror and
alarm.

He knew that the door had been unlocked and that a light travelled in,
held by a strange Burman, and that his terror of Leh Shin had made him
see things strangely, as though from a long way off; until, at the last,
the police had come and knocked the chain off his leg, and someone had
told him that his master was dead and had been found hanging in the
shop.

Absalom's face quivered and he began to whimper.

"And now my master is dead, and never in Mangadone shall I find such
another who will care for me and give me the pleasant life in Paradise
Street."

Hartley handed the boy some money.

"Take him away," he said to the Bearer. "You have told your story very
well, Absalom."

He looked across at Coryndon when the room