"Nay, juggler, I have no time for stories."
"Then thy children?"
"I have none."
"Perhaps thy wife?"
"Nor have I a wife, either."
The juggler grunted. "Art thou a celibate that thou hast no wife?" He leaned closer, peering into the Tibetan's face. "Indeed, O merchant, thy face is like that of a lama I knew in Simla!"
Da-yak's slitty little eyes opened wider, showing small, bleary pupils.
"What is it to thee, O scarred one, if I have a wife or not?"
To himself the juggler admitted that it meant more than a little, but to the Tibetan he said: "Scarred indeed, and afflicted of an eye! Seest thou this?"—touching the scar. "It is a mark left by a Dugpa's knife—in Tibet. I was headman for a Burra Sahib who traveled from Sikkhim, which is a far country which thou hast never heard of, to the holy city of Lhassa. From thence we went down, across many mountains, into Hkamti Long and the Kachin country. At Fort Hertz we followed the mule-road. That was many years ago."
"Thou dost lie," accused Da-yak. "No white man has ever crossed from Tibet into the country of the Hkamtis. There is no road there—"