When would the rains break? Those rains the other men who knew had told me of. Rains that chilled you to the bone, and made your teeth chatter. The thought that in the past--it seemed years ago--I had somewhere shivered with the cold, made me laugh aloud, as, after throwing off my light cotton jacket and rolling up my shirt-sleeves, I sat mopping the perspiration from my forehead. The veins of my neck seemed to swell, and my breath came in gasps. Thinking that it might be somewhat cooler there, I stepped into the street, and taking out my pouch, tried to roll a cigarette. Three times the thin paper broke in my sticky, perspiring fingers before I succeeded in obtaining a damp and flabby apology for a smoke. This slight exertion had caused me to perspire from every pore, and it seemed hotter outside than within. My light clothes clung to my limbs like those of a man pulled out of a pond. Disgusted, I returned and sat down again on the edge of the bed, and, after endless difficulty, succeeded in lighting my damp cigarette with a still damper match. The tiny twinkle of the opium-lamp deepened the darkness outside the small circle of its light. Tho's brownish-yellow features, on which it shone, reminded me of a quaint and clever old Japanese ivory I had once seen; and the dark background of the night was like the black velvet-lined case which had contained it. From where I sat I could see the arm of the sergeant's wife--bare from the elbow--and I watched with a kind of sleepy fascination her small and nimble fingers as they manipulated the drug. The soft light gave to her skin a rich gold tint, and made the arm and hand look graceful and comely. The Rembrandt-like effect of the picture gripped me, and for the moment the heat was forgotten. Tho's voice brought me from a waking dream when, after laying down his pipe, he said: "Patience, _camarade_! It will come. When the bull-frogs join in the song the great waters are not far off. Were you on sentry to-night you would hear the dreary note of the rain-bird, for I'd stake a week's pay she will be out. Ba (his wife) tells me it sang to-day before sunrise; but women were ever dreamers." The little woman looked up from her task of cleaning the silver skewer, and retorted: "Dreamers! Oh, great slaughterer of men, and dost thou give me time to dream? Is not my life as full of work as our mountain rise is full of fat? Am I not still a _tho_ from the Tam-Dao? (a group of mountains to the west of Thaï-Nguyen). Are not my teeth white, though I have a husband who has blackened his and become a plainsman?" As she smiled at her own wit I caught a flash of ivory between her red lips, and noticed for the first time the regularity of her small features. The _Doy_ smiled good-naturedly, and replied: