Terry finished, awaited expression of his decision. For a long time the patriarch remained silent, idly opening and closing the blades of his knife. The Hillmen ranged along the wall, who had listened attentively to Terry's arguments for opening up their country to the outlanders, waited their chief's pronouncement with set faces and gleaming eyes, their brown bodies still as bronze figures.
At last the patriarch raised his head high, so that the snow white hair fell back across his blanketed shoulders. He spoke so slowly that Terry was able to follow him with whispered interpretations into the anxious Major's ear.
"Many rainy seasons have washed my hair white. I live to see strange things—I never thought to see a white man's face within my walls—except, perhaps, upon a spear, grinning.
"When I was born—and no other man or woman of my tribe lives who saw the sun of that far day—they said, the wise men, that much good would come to my people before I died.
"They read it in the stars, they said. No great ill has come, except to my own blood. All gone—wife, sons, grandsons. Never again will the Agong ring for one of Ohto's blood!"
They felt the greater pity because the proud old chieftain demanded no sympathy, but merely stated the pathetic fact with a simple dignity.
He was silent for a time, lost in an old man's memories. Then he turned to one of the four retainers who flanked his chair.
"I am lonely," he said. "I would that Ahma would sit by me."
As the swart Hillman crossed the springy floor and rapped gently upon a closed door, the Major saw that every black eye focussed upon it with eager expectancy. For a moment the room was palpitant with suspense. He looked to Terry for explanation, but turned back at the grinding crunch of the hingeless door which opened to frame a fairer vision than the Major had ever dreamed, asleep or awake.
A white girl had stepped out of the other room and paused a moment against the dark background of the door to sweep the room with big black eyes.