'He always does when he tells this story,' broke in George, quite pleased with the success of his entertainment. 'I don't think he quite knows why he does it, however. Sometimes he says the woman was looking for one; sometimes that she always carries one in her left hand to balance the world in her right. But he always takes the unbaked pot to the ruins and buries it with two of those odd little ninepins, he calls men and women, inside it. He is as mad as a hatter, you know.' 'Several hatters,' assented Gordon fervently, 'but it is an interesting theory of creation.' 'Now don't,' protested Dan, sitting with his long legs crunched up on the low stool close to the potter. 'It is too human for dissection by the Folklore Society. But I'm surprised at one thing. The wrestlers--they are persistent figures in Indian tales, Miss Tweedie--are generally represented as giants. They are pigmies here.' 'The Huzoor is right and wrong,' replied the potter in answer to an inquiry; 'the pâilwans were neither pigmies nor giants. They were as the Huzoor--two and a half hâths round the chest--neither more nor less.' 'That's a good shot,' remarked Dan in English, 'forty-five inches according to my tailor. You have an accurate eye, potter-ji,' he added in Hindustani, 'only half an inch out.' 'Not a hair's-breadth, Huzoor,' replied the old man mildly. 'The measures of the pailwâns is the measure of the Huzoor. I have it here; my fathers used it, and I use it.' He sought a moment in the little niche, hollowed, close to his right hand, out of the hard soil forming the side of his sunken seat, and drew from it a fine twisted cord of brown, red, and cream coloured wool. It was divided into measures by small shells strung on the twist and knotted into their places. 'Hullo!' cried Gordon eagerly, 'that must be hundreds of years old. Those are sea-shells, and very rare. Simpson at the museum showed me one in fossil the other day. I wonder how the dickens the old man got hold of them?' 'Two and a half hâths,' repeated Fuzl Elâhi absently, 'the potter's full measure for a man in the beginning and the end.' He leaned forward rapidly as he spoke, passed the cord round Dan Fitzgerald's chest, and drew the ends together. The curled spirals of the two shells lay half an inch apart. 'So much for the garments,' he muttered. 'Yea! I knew it. The measure of a true pâilwan to a hair's breadth. 'And what am I, potter-ji?' asked George, laughing. The puzzled look came back to the old man's face. 'The Huzoor may be a pâilwan too. Times have changed.' 'Rough on a fellow, rather!' exclaimed the boy, still laughing. 'Here, Fitz! chuck me over the thing. Is that fair, Miss Tweedie?' She laughed back into his bright face, as he pulled his hardest to make the two second shells meet, then shook her head. 'Not on yourself, Mr. Keene. You are more of a hero than that, I should say.'