“Thank you, Ram Lal, for your friendly concern in my behalf.  I do not think I shall act as you suggest, but I am nevertheless grateful to you.  There is one thing I want to ask you, and consult you about, however.”

“My friend, what is the use of my giving you advice that you will not follow?  If I lived with you, and were your constant companion, you would ask me to advise you twenty times a day, and then you would go and do the diametric opposite of what I suggested.  If I did not see in you something that I see in few other men, I would not be here.  There are plenty of fools who have wit enough to take counsel of a wise man.  There are few men of wit wise enough to be guided by their betters, as if they were only fools for the time.  Yet because you are so wayward I will help you once or twice more, and then I will leave you to your own course—­which you, in your blindness, will call your kismet, not seeing that your fate is continually in your own hands—­more so at this moment than ever before.  Ask, and I will answer.”

“Thanks, Ram Lal.  It is this I would know.  You are aware that I have undertaken a novel kind of bargain.  The man you wot of is to be delivered to me near Keitung.  I am anxious for the man’s safety afterwards, and I would be glad of some hint about disposing of him.  I must go alone, for I do not want any witness of what I am going to do, and as a mere matter of personal safety for myself and the man I am going to set free, I must decide on some plan of action when I meet the band of sowars who will escort him.  They are capable of murdering us both if the maharajah instructs them to.  As long as I am alive to bring the old man into disgrace with the British, the captive is safe; but it would be an easy matter for those fellows to dispose of us together, and there would be an end of the business.”

“Of course they could,” replied Ram Lal, adding in an ironical tone “and if you insist upon putting your head down the tiger’s throat, how do you expect me to prevent the brute from snapping it off?  That would be a ‘phenomenon,’ would it not?  And only this evening you were saying that you despised ‘phenomena.’”

“I said that such things were indifferent to me.  I did not say I despised them.  But I think that this thing may be done without performing any miracles.”

“If it were not such a good action on your part I would have nothing to do with it.  But since you mean to risk your neck for your own peculiar views of what is right, I will endeavour that you shall not break it.  I will meet you a day’s journey before you reach Keitung, somewhere on the road, and we will go together and do the business.  But if I am to help you I will not promise not to perform some miracles, as you call them, though you know very well they are no such thing.  Meanwhile, do as you please about the tiger-hunt; I shall say no more about it.”  He paused, and then, withdrawing one delicate hand from the folds of his caftan, he pointed to the wall behind Isaacs and me, and said, “What a very singular piece of workmanship is that yataghan!”