who remembers this truth. The value of mystery, the value of silence,
and above all things, the supreme value of a tongue that is a servant
and not a master; Coryndon considered these values and wondered again at
the garrulity of men. Talk, the fluid, ineffectual force that fills the
world with noise, that kills illusions and betrays every latent
weakness; surely the high gods laughed when they put a tongue in the
mouth of man. He pinched his lips together and his eyes lighted with a
passing smile of mirth.

"In Burma, there are no clappers to the bells," he said to himself.
"Each man must strike hard before sound answers to his hand, and truly
it is well to think of this at times." And, still amused by the fleeting
memory of the evening, he went to bed and slept.




XV

IN WHICH THE FURTHERING OF A STRANGE COMRADESHIP IS CONTINUED, AND A
BEGGAR FROM AMRITZAR CRIES IN THE STREETS OF MANGADONE


Trade was slack in the shop of Leh Shin, the Chinaman. He had sat in the
odorous gloom and done little else than feel his arms and rub his legs,
for the greater part of the day. His new acquaintance, Shiraz, had taken
over possession of his goods, scrutinizing them with care before he did
so, in case the brass pots had been exchanged in the night for inferior
pots of smaller circumference, and in the end he had departed into his
own rat-burrow, two doors up the street, where his friend the Burman was