The sun flattened a little more at the bottom, and began to move quickly, as it does in India--anxious apparently to get away from the day's ill deeds. “Shoulder umms!” commanded Brown. “General salute! Present-umms!” The red sun slid below the sky-line, and the night was on them, as though somebody had shut the lid. Brown stepped to the sword, jerked it out of the ground and returned it to his scabbard in three motions. “Shoulder-umms! Order-umms! Dismiss!” The men filed back into the hut again, disconsolately, without swearing and without mirth. They had put the sun to bed with proper military decency. They would have seen humor--perhaps--or an excuse for blasphemy in the omission of such a detail, but it was much too hot to swear at the execution of it. Besides, Brown was a strange individual who detested swearing, and it was a very useful thing, and wise, to humor him. He had a way of his own, and usually got it. Brown posted a sentry at the hut-door, and another at the crossroads which he was to guard, then went round behind the but to bargain with the goatskin-merchant. But he stopped before he reached the tree. “Boy!” he called, and a low-caste native servant came toward him at a run. “Is that fakir there still?” “Ha, sahib!” “Ha? Can't you learn to say 'yes,' like a human being?” “Yes, sahib!” “All right. I'm going to have a talk with him. Kill the goat, and tell the Punjabi to wait, if he wants to buy the skin.” “Ha, sahib!” Brown spun round on his heel, and the servant wilted. “Yes, sahib!” he corrected. Brown left him then, with a nod that conveyed remission of cardinal sin, and a warning not to repeat the offence. As the native ran off to get the butcher-knife and sharpen it, it was noticeable that he wore a chastened look. “Send Sidiki after me!” Brown shouted after him, and a minute later a nearly naked Beluchi struck a match and emerged from the darkness, with the light of a lantern gleaming on his skin. He followed like a snake, and only Brown's sharp, authority-conveying footfalls could be heard as he trudged sturdily--straight-backed, eyes straight in front of him--to where an age-old baobab loomed like a phantom in the night. He marched like a man in armor. Not even the terrific heat of a Central-Indian night could take the stiffening out of him. The Beluchi ran ahead, just before they reached the tree. He stopped and held the lantern up to let its light fall on some object that was close against the tree-trunk. At a good ten-pace distance from the object Brown stopped and stared. The lamplight fell on two little dots that gleamed. Brown stepped two paces nearer. Two deadly, malicious human eyes blinked once, and then stared back at him. “Does he never sleep?” asked Brown.