All night it rained, and in the morning the river was talking to the cliffs in a louder voice. And the water was up and coming. Bits of drift were floating. Among the traders I found Pra Oom Bwaht settled in a little hut off by himself. He had scant store of Karen cloths, Laos baskets, some hammered brass. He was sitting on a big box, and it was covered with a mat woven of tree-cotton fiber. He arose to meet me and came to the door. “Let us chat here,” he said. “I like the sun better than the shade.” It was queer to deny me a seat beside him, I thought; but I let it pass. I was not paying much attention to details then. So we sat in the doorway and watched the rain and heard the river talking to Kalgai Gorge. Trade was slack and would be until the greater rains came bearing boats and rafts from above and over and beyond, from up the river and the little rivers coming into it. I could make nothing of Pra Oom Bwaht, I say. I left him and went out to chaffer a bit. “Who knows the Karen fool?” Ali Beg, just down from Szechuan after trading rifles to Chinese Mohammedans for opium, demanded of me from the door of his own place. “Why?” I asked. “He trades like a fool, letting a rupee’s worth go for a pice.” “Let him,” I laughed, “so long as he keeps away from me.” “And yours?” “Why do you ask that?” “Come in and drink of tea with me,” he invited. So I went in and we sat eye to eye, face to face, across his little teakwood table, each squatting on his heels, and drank tea and talked of many things. “Now that we have said all the useless things, tell me what is at the bottom of thy heart,” Ali demanded. Up there the important things are kept for the dessert of the talk. He was an old friend, with his coal-black eyes, great hairy arms and rippling black beard. “Thus it was, heart of my soul,” I said, laying hold of a lock of his beard up under his green turban, in token of entire truth-telling. “Thus it was”—and I tugged at the lock of beard. So I told him the tale, from the time of my going to Karen until the time of my coming to Kalgai town and the arrival of Pra Oom Bwaht. He sat a long time in silence. Then he reached into his robe and drew out a fine dagger of Sikh smithy work, hammered, figured on the blade, keen, heavy of hilt; in the tip of the handle a ball of polished steel, hollow and filled with mercury. It was a throwing knife. “Take this,” Ali urged. “I taught thee how to cast it at a foe years ago when we first went up the great river together. I go from here to-night by boats toward Maulmain. It will fall out with thee as it will fall out.” I took the dagger because it was Ali’s gift, not because I was afraid. Why should I fear anything that walked on two legs or four? Even though it wore a tail or horns? At nightfall I went back to my house on the rock spit. The stream was roaring now—like a baby lion.