Mhtoon Pah grew suddenly rigid, and the thick black hair on his head seemed to bristle.  Pressed close against the window, with only a slender barrier of glass between them, was the face of Leh Shin, the Chinaman.  A ray of white moonlight fell across them both, and its clear radiance lighted up every feature of the curio dealer’s face, changing its brown into a strange, ghastly pallor.  For a moment they stood immovable, staring into each other’s eyes, and the shadows behind Mhtoon Pah in the shop, and the shadows behind Leh Shin in the street, seemed to listen and wait with them, seemed to creep closer and enfold them, seemed to draw up and up on noiseless feet and hang suspended around them.  The moment might have endured for years, so full was it of menace and passion, and then the man outside moved quickly and the moonlight flooded in across the face and shoulders of the Burman.

For a second longer he remained as though fascinated, and then Mhtoon Pah wrenched at the door and thundered back the heavy bolts.  There were flecks of foam on his lips, and his eyes rolled as he dashed through the door and out down the steps, rending the air with cries of murder.  He was too late, the Chinaman had gone.  When the street flocked out to see what the disturbance meant, Mhtoon Pah was crouching on his steps in a kind of fit.

“I have seen the face of the slayer of Absalom,” he shrieked, when the crowd had carried him in, and recovered him to his senses.

“Is he a devil?” asked a young Burman, in tones of joyful excitement.  “A devil with iron claws has been seen several nights lately.”

“A Chinese devil,” groaned Mhtoon Pah, speaking through his clenched teeth.  “One who shall yet be hanged for his crime.”

“Ah! ah!” said the watchers.  “He dreams that it is a man, but it is known that a devil has walked in Paradise Street, his jaws open.  Certainly he has eaten little Absalom.”

Dawn was breaking, the pale, still hour that is often the hour of death; and a cool breeze rippled in the date palms and in the flat green leaves of the rubber plants, and the festoons of succulent green growths that climbed up the houses of the Cantonments, and dawn found the Rev. Francis Heath sleeping quietly.  He was lying with one arm under his head, and his worn face in almost child-like repose.  Wherever he was, sleep had carried him to a place of peace and refreshment.  When he awoke he would have forgotten his dream, but for the moment the dream sufficed, and he rested in the circle of its charm.

All the time that we are young and careless and happy, we are building retreats for memory that make harbours of rest in later years, when the storms come with force.  All the old things that did not count, come back to calm and to restore.  The school-room, where the light flickered on a special corner of the ceiling, telling the children to come out and play; the tapping of the laurels outside the church windows,