"From Pnom Dhek."
"Then you are a runaway slave?" asked King.
The brute nodded his head. "But you need not try to return me. If you did that I should kill you."
"I do not intend to try to return you to Pnom Dhek. I am not from Pnom Dhek."
"Yes, I knew that from your armour," said the brute. "You are from Lodidhapura. You stole the girl and they sent soldiers after you. Is that not true?"
"Yes," replied King.
"It may be hard to take the girl away from the soldiers of Lodidhapura," said Prang. "We cannot do it by day, for they are many and we are few; but we can find them and follow them; and at night, perhaps, you can sneak into their camp and steal the girl, if she will come with you willingly."
"She will," said King; and then: "How long have you lived alone in the jungle, Prang?"
"I ran away when I was a boy. Many rains have come since then. I do not know how many, but it has been a long time."
As Prang led on through the jungle they conversed but little; enough, however, to assure King that the great, hulking brute had the mind of a little child, and as long as King did nothing to arouse his suspicions or his fears he would be quite docile and tractable. King noticed that Prang was not leading him back over the same route that they had come, and when he asked the man why they were going in a different direction, Prang explained that he knew the trail that the warriors would take in returning to Lodidhapura and that this was a short-cut to it.