"What next? What now? Are there any gods? I doubt it. If there were they would admire--they would inspire me! To the palace? Tell her? Certainly not; she would get the credit and Bamjee would be left out in the cold as usual. Then what? Never mind the danger--danger is the spice of profit. Who--where--what is the key to the riddle now? Quorn is! "Can I find him? Where did he hide that elephant? Puzzle: find an elephant. Only all outdoors in which to look. And at that he may be indoors. Nevertheless, if I find the elephant I find Quorn. Not there? Only have to wait, perhaps sleep--Quorn will arrive presently. If I can find him, tell him, make him understand, perhaps--oh, damn perhaps! I am a genius--I can be what that idiot Blake calls a god in a box--no, god out of a box. Critical moment, pull plug--save everybody--here--credit--thank you, Bamjee--profitable--very. Where could Quorn have hidden that abominable pachydermatous atrocity? Oh--all that distance?--walk--well--" Bamjee walked until he found a pony that had stood all night hitched to a shop door. It had a bridle, but no saddle. "Flagrant breach of regulation number so-and-so--duty of any citizen aware of same to take steps--pony, do you know where the city pound is? Neither do I. Let us look for it. Canter, you hairy curse, or somebody may catch us!" CHAPTER VII. ASOKA IN HIDING. The outcast's lot is not a happy one, but there are compensations. The Chandala are regarded as so untouchable that even sweepers will have nothing to do with them. They are not allowed in cities. Such villages as they have are in the jungle, where they are neither taxed nor troubled by the census taker. If they die, they die; and if they rot, they rot; it is nobody's business. So they are as free as any sort of human being can be, and the proof that they are actually human is that they crave what they have not got--servitude. They ignorantly ache for a red-hot religion and rules and a boss to deprive them of liberty--a fact which had made it very easy for Maraj to pose among them as a being from another world. Quorn had merely taken pity on them and employed them to cut grass for his elephants. He had made a number of journeys into the jungle to show them what kind of grass he wanted, and on one of these expeditions he had found a ruined building, roofless but otherwise serviceable. It had been full of trash and brambles when he first discovered it, but he had made use of the elephants to clean it out, and he was using it now as a place in which to hide Asoka from the machinations of the Brahmins.