“My height!” The man had read his thoughts! “Not quite tall enough. Besides--you are a soldier, are you not? And do you fight?” He nodded toward a dozen water-buffaloes, that slouched along the street with wet goatskin mussuks slung on their blue flanks. “They can fight,” he said smiling. “So can any other fool!” Then, after a minute of rather strained silence: “My message is from her.” “From Yasmini?” “Who else?” King accepted the rebuke with a little inclination of the head. He spoke as little as possible, because he was puzzled. He had become conscious of a puzzled look in the Rangar's eyes--of a subtle wonderment that might be intentional flattery (for Art and the East are one). Whenever the East is doubtful, and recognizes doubt, it is as dangerous as a hillside in the rains, and it only added to his problem if the Rangar found in him something inexplicable. The West can only get the better of the East when the East is too cock-sure. “She has jolly well gone North!” said the Rangar suddenly, and King shut his teeth with a snap. He sat bolt upright, and the Rangar allowed himself to look amused. “When? Why?” “She was too jolly well excited to wait, sahib! She is of the North, you know. She loves the North, and the men of the 'Hills'; and she knows them because she loves them. There came a tar (telegram) from Peshawur, from a general, to say King sahib comes to Delhi; but already she had completed all arrangements here. She was in a great stew, I can assure you. Finally she said, 'Why should I wait?' Nobody could answer her.” He spoke English well enough. Few educated foreign gentlemen could have spoken it better, although there was the tendency to use slang that well-bred natives insist on picking up from British officers; and as he went on, here and there the native idiom crept through, translated. King said nothing, but listened and watched, puzzled more than he would have cared to admit by the look in the Rangar's eyes. It was not suspicion--nor respect. Yet there was a suggestion of both. “At last she said, 'It is well; I will not wait! I know of this sahib. He is a man whose feet stand under him and he will not tread my growing flowers into garbage! He will be clever enough to pick up the end of the thread that I shall leave behind and follow it and me! He is a true hound, with a nose that reads the wind, or the general sahib never would have sent him!' So she left me behind, sahib, to--to present to you the end of the thread of which she spoke.” King tossed away the stump of the cigarette and rolled his tongue round the butt of a fresh cheroot. The word “hound” is not necessarily a compliment in any of a thousand Eastern tongues and gains little by translation. It might have been a slip, but the East takes advantage of its own slips as well as of other peoples' unless watched. The carriage swayed at high speed round three sharp corners in succession before the Rangar spoke again.