"We got some English tobacco at Madras," Dick said, not hesitating for once at telling an untruth. "We sold most of it to the Feringhee soldiers, on our way up, but I think I have got a little of it still left somewhere in the pack. I am too busy to look for it now, and we shall soon be going to show our goods to the officers' wives; but if you can come here at nine o'clock, I may have looked it out for you." "I can't come at nine," the man said, "for at half-past eight I am shut up for the night." "Come at eight, then," Dick said. "If I am not back, come the first thing in the morning, before we get busy." "I will come, sure enough," the man said. "I would walk a hundred miles, if they would let me, for half a pound of pigtail." "Get rid of them, Surajah," Dick whispered, as the man shouldered his way through the crowd. "Make some excuse to send them off." "Now, my friends," Surajah said, "you see it is getting dusk. It will soon be too dark to see what you are buying, and we have been selling for eight hours, and need rest. At eight o'clock tomorrow we will open our packs again, and everyone shall be served; but I pray you excuse us going on any longer now. As you see, we are not as young as we once were, and are both sorely weary." As time was no object, and the work of purchasing would relieve the tedium of the following day, the crowd good humouredly dispersed. Surajah rose and closed the door after the last of them, and then turned to Dick. He had, himself, been too busily engaged in satisfying the demands of the customers to look up, and had not noticed that one of them was a white man. "What is it?" he asked, as he looked round. "Has the heat upset you?" Then, as his eye fell on Dick, his voice changed, and he hurried towards him, exclaiming anxiously: "What is it, Dick? What has happened?" For Dick was leaning against a bale by the side of him, and had hidden his face in his arms. Surajah saw that his whole frame was shaking with emotion. "My dear lord," Surajah said, as he knelt beside him and laid his arm across his shoulder, "you frighten me. Has aught gone wrong? Are you ill?" Dick slightly shook his head, and, lifting one of his hands, made a sign to Surajah that he could not, at present, speak. A minute or two later, he raised his head. "Did you not see him, Surajah?" "See who, Dick?" "The white man you last served." "I did not notice any white man." "It was the one you gave a pound of the best tobacco to. Did you not hear me speak to him, afterwards?" "No. I was so busy, and so fearfully hot with this padded thing, it was as much as I could do to attend to what they said to me. A white man, did you say? Oh, Dick!" And as the idea struck him, he rose to his feet in his excitement. "Do you think--do you really think he can be your father?"