Saya Chone started, touched his pony with his heel, and cantered forward. Then he dropped back to his former pace as they cleared a patch of bamboo and saw the origin of the sound. On the edge of the slope stood a man dressed something like a monk. His head was close shaven, and he carried a large yellow parasol through which the sunlight poured, and made his polished skull shine like gold. He carried a large basket on a pole slung over his shoulder. Jack had seen such a figure before, and Buck had told him all about it. It was a _pothoodaw_, a man who, without belonging to the order of regular monks, still leads a life of prayer and pious works. The holy man had paused on the edge of the slope to recite his prayers, moved doubtless thereto by the sight of the condemned man below. Now, as the little procession arrived, he swung up his basket and moved away without a glance at them. Nor, save for Jack, was a glance cast at him. A _pothoodaw_ is a familiar sight in every corner of the country, and his wanderings from place to place take him to every nook, however desert or solitary. Jack, too, soon had eyes for something beside the holy man. They reached the edge of the slope. Saya Chone turned with a grin and spoke to one of the Kachins. The latter at once whipped off his turban, unrolled it and folded it over Jack's eyes, and so the latter was led down the slope. "Now you can look," said a mocking voice, and the turban was whipped aside. Jack gave a cry of horror. He could not help it. He had meant to restrain all signs of feeling, but this was too much. He had been placed so that he stood almost breast to breast with the most dreadful and grisly horror that the mind of man could conceive. He looked upon the horrible, dry, shrivelled mummy of something which had been a man. The shape of the villager hung there in the bonds, but it was a mere framework of bones, upon which hung wrinkled brown folds of shrivelled skin. The haunting terror of the vision was beyond all description. Jack tried to speak, to ask what had done this fearful thing. But his dried tongue refused its office; it clung to the roof of his mouth. The half-caste at his shoulder now broke into a chuckling laugh. "He looks pretty, does he not?" said Saya Chone. "And you see nothing has happened but what I said. He has been tied here all night." He was silent for a few moments in order to let the awful sight sink deeply into Jack's mind, then he went on. "You are puzzled. I can see it in your face. What has happened to him? I will tell you. You now see what a man looks like when _every single drop of blood has been sucked out of his body_."