Coryndon smiled and glanced at Shiraz.

“And you think so also, grandson of a Tucktoo, for though you are old, your white hairs bring you no wisdom.”

“I am the Sahib’s servant, but who knoweth the ways of devils, since their footprints cannot be seen, neither upon the sand of the desert nor in the snows of the great hills?”

“Did he speak of Absalom?”

“He told me, Protector of the Poor, that the boy, though of Christian caste, was to Mhtoon Pah as the apple of his eye, and that he fed him upon sweets from the vendor’s stall.  Let it be said, for thy wisdom to unravel, that therefore Leh Shin felt mirth in his mind, knowing that the heart of his foe was wrung as the Dhobie wrings the soiled garment.”

Shiraz fell silent and looked up from the floor at the face of his master, who got up and stretched himself.

“Is my bath ready, Shiraz?”

“All is prepared, though the pani walla, a worker of iniquity, steals the wood for his own burning; therefore, the water is not hot, and ill is done to the good name of Hartley Sahib’s house.”

When he was dressed he strolled into the drawing-room, and sat down at the piano, playing softly until Hartley came in.

“Shall you be away long, do you suppose?” he asked, looking with interest at Coryndon’s smooth, black head.

“I may be, but it is impossible to tell.  If I want you, I will send a message by Shiraz.”

The dinner passed off without incident, and not once did Coryndon open the secret door of his mind, to add to the strange store of facts he had gathered there.  He wanted nothing from Atkins, who knew less of the Rev. Francis Heath than he did himself, and he had to sustain his role of ignorance of the country.  The two men stayed late, and it seemed to Coryndon that when men talk they do more than talk, they tell many things unconsciously.

Perhaps, if people realized, as Coryndon realized, the value of restrained speech, we should know less of our neighbours’ follies and weaknesses than we do.  There was a noticeable absence of interest in what anyone else had to say.  Atkins had his own foible, Fitzgibbon his, and Hartley, who knew more of the ways of men, a more interesting, but not less egoistic platform from which he desired to speak.  They seemed to stalk naked and unashamed before the eyes of the one man who never gave a definite opinion, and who never asserted his own theories or urged his own philosophy of life.

Coryndon listened because it amused him faintly, but he was glad when the party broke up and they left.  What a planet of words it was, he thought, as he sat in his room and reflected over the day.  Words that ought to carry value and weight, but were treated like so many loose pebbles cast into void space; and he wondered as he thought of it; and from wondering at the wordy, noisy world in which he found himself, he went on to wonder at the greater silence that was so much more powerful than words.  “The value of mystery,” was the phrase that presented itself to his mind.