A jibing laugh echoed through the arches.
"So even Birbal hath superstition! But listen! Stay, I will tell thee common truth. I go nightly to swing up the palace wall to Akbar's balcony. Wherefore? Because, my lord, I pass not far from a certain window where Mirza Ibrahîm and Khodadâd Khân hatch conspiracies; and there is an iron stanchion by the side of it with which even a swinging dhooli may find rest--and listen! Dost understand? So I hear all, even their hours of meeting; and I am spy, a man of many faces--as thou knowst. I was there but now--and the diamond is stolen. I meant when I bid thee come hither, simply to warn thee, since to thy charge----"
Birbal rose then, his eyes full of impatient disregard for the trickster, the juggler--the man who pretended to supernatural knowledge, and found it--or said he found it--by common spying!
"Why dost thou tell me?" he asked quickly. "Thou sayest thou art friend to Akbar. Thou art no friend of mine."
There was a pause; a faint hesitancy came to the shadowed face before him, as of one who, playing many different parts, finds them mixed up in general confusion. Suddenly he seemed to grip himself, the real man behind so many disguises of the unreal.
"Yet are we both friends of Akbar's aim, that is Unity. Thy hand, Birbal! let us swear troth for that!"
That slender, brown, outstretched hand with the green glint of the emerald on its index finger seemed to have a compelling power. Birbal's sought it and the result was startling. The man whose whole life was one long claim for individuality, realised in a second that so far as his impact on that clasping hand was concerned, he had lost all sense of personal touch. Flesh seemed made one with Flesh, with all things.
"Tat twam asi" ("Thou art that!")
The fundamental creed of the East overwhelmed him as he stood. Then suddenly he was alone again.
Alone in the darkness, save for the faint glimmer of the toothed arches that gave on the shadowy gloom of overhanging trees and sliding river.