Mhtoon Pah might be driving wildly along a road leading out of Mangadone, and though one old Chinaman and a mad Burman could not stop him, the long arm of police law would grab and capture his gross body.  Leh Shin sat quite still, content to rest and consider this.  Telegrams flashed messages under the great bidding of authority, men sprang armed from stations in every village, the close grip of fate was not more close than the grasp of the awakened machinery of justice, and in the centre of its power Mhtoon Pah was helpless as a fly in the web of a spider.

“He travels fast, and fear is sitting on his shoulder, for he travels to his death,” he repeated over and over, swaying backwards and forwards.

He had an opium pellet hidden somewhere in his clothes, and he found it and turned it over his tongue; weariness and sleep conquered the pain, and Leh Shin sat with his head bent forward in heavy stupor.  From this condition he awoke to lights and noises and the sound of a file working on iron.

The police had come and Hartley was bending over the boy, talking to him kindly and reassuring him as far as he could.  Upstairs, the heavy thud of blows on the outer door of the shop echoed through the house with steady, persistent sound.

Dawn had come in real earnest, and the street, but lately returned from the excitements of the feast at the Pagoda, was thrilled by a new and much more satisfying sensation.  Three blue-coated, leather-belted policemen were on the top of the steps that led to the door of the curio shop, forcing it in.  The heavy bolts held, and though the padlocked chain hung idle, the door resisted all their efforts.

Hartley was down in the cellars, and his way through to the shop was blocked . . . blocked by the inner door which was also closed from inside, and somewhere within was Mhtoon Pah.  He was very silent in his shop.  No amount of hammering called forth any response, and even when the door gave way and the bolt fell clattering to the ground, he did not spring out.

People had sometimes wondered at the curious destiny of the wooden man.  He had been there so long and had done his duty so faithfully.  In rain or shine alike, he had always been in the street, eternally bowing the passers up the steps.  Americans had tried to buy him, and had wished to take him home to point at other free and enlightened citizens, but Mhtoon Pah refused all offers of money.  The wooden man was faithful to him, and he in his turn was, in some way, faithful to the wooden man.  He had been there when Mhtoon Pah was a clerk and had indicated his rise, he had seen him take over possession of the shop, and he had been witness to many trivial things, and now he stood, the crowd behind him, and pointed silently again.  It seemed right for him to point, but it was grotesque that he still smiled and bent forward.

The closed gates of the dawn opened and let in the sun, and the pale yellow light ventured across the threshold where the policemen hung back, and even the crowd in the street were silent.  The light fell on a thousand small things that reflected its rays; it fell on a heavy carved box drawn across the further entrance, on the swinging glass doors of the open silk cupboard, on bowls of silver and bowls of brass, and it fell full on the thing that of all others drew the horrified eyes of the watchers.