Had Shiraz known the legend of the wise wolf who changed from man to beast, he might have supposed that some such change was taking place in Leh Shin.  His trembling lips dribbled, his head jerked as though supported by wires, and his eyebrows twitched violently as though he had no control over their movements.  He had forgotten Shiraz and was thinking only of the tribulation he had suffered and of the man whose gross form inhabited his whole mental world.  Shaking like a leaf, he got off his bed and stood on the earth floor.

“May he be eaten by mud-sores,” he said savagely.  “May he die by his own hand, and so, as is the Teaching, be shut out of peace, and return to earth as a scorpion, to be crushed again into lesser life by a stone.”

“By the will of Allah, who alone is great, there will be an end of thy troubles,” said Shiraz non-committally as he got up.  “Thou hast suffered much.  Be it requited to thee as thou wouldst have it fall in the hour that is already written; for no man may escape his destiny, though he be fleet of foot as the antlered stag.”

“Son of a Prophet, thy words are full of wisdom.”

“Let it comfort thine affliction,” said Shiraz, with the air of a man making a gift.

“Yet I would hasten the end.”  He gave a strange, soundless laugh that startled Shiraz, who looked at him sideways.  “And mark this, O wise one, mine enemy hath already felt the first lash of the whip fall, even the whip that scourged my own body.  He hath lost the boy whom he ever praised in the streets, and suffered much grief thereby.  May his grief thrive and may it be added to until the weight is greater than he can bear.”  He swung up his hand with a stabbing movement.  “I would rip him like a cushion of fine down.  I would strike his face with my shoe as the Nats that he dreads caught his screaming soul.”

“Peace, peace,” said Shiraz.  “Such words are ill for him who speaks, and ill alike for him who listens.  In such a day as already the end is scored like a comet’s tail across the sky, the end shall be, and not before that day.  Cease from thy clamour lest the street hear thee, and run to know the cause.”

He took leave of his friend and went slowly away to his own house, having achieved his master’s mission, and feeling well satisfied with his afternoon’s work.

Motive, the hidden spring of action, was made clear, and Shiraz knew enough of his master’s methods to realize that he had come upon a very definite piece of evidence against Leh Shin, the Chinaman.  From the point of view of Shiraz the man was quite justified in killing Absalom, since “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” appeared fair and reasonable to his mind.  The Burman had overreached Leh Shin, and now Leh Shin had begun the cycle again, and had smitten at the curio dealer through the curio dealer’s boy, for whom he appeared to have a fanatical affection.  According to Shiraz, the