"Salaam, bhatiyara, thou beholdest me again," he said on entering.
The innkeeper looked up with a start from among the pots in which he was preparing supper for two guests.
"Salaam," he said, with no great cordiality. "Thou hast been on a long visit to that friend of thine."
"Truly. Who can strive against fate! I was smitten with a fever. We hill-men suffer grievously in the plains in this time of rain. But I am now recovered, Allah be praised! and ready to go once more about my business. Give me to eat, I am very hungry; and then I will sleep. To-morrow I will go forth again with my goods, and maybe I shall find more ready buyers."
"Hai! who can strive against fate! But a few days after thou hadst departed, there came in the middle of the night vile robbers, and lo! when I awoke in the morning, thy goods were not. It is kismet."
"Thou sayest! and my camel—did he die?"
There was a tone of mockery in the question which apparently escaped the notice of the innkeeper, though it provoked a chuckle from the two traders who were tearing apart with their fingers a well-stewed fowl.
"Hai!" said the innkeeper, with a mournful face; "when thou didst not return, thy camel would not eat, and his hump sank away to flatness, and on the tenth day he died."
"Thou sayest? Of a truth, bhatiyara, he must needs come to life again no later than the morrow's sunrise, and those vile robbers must be pricked in their hearts and restore the goods they have stolen, or assuredly the Kotwal will come and visit this serai, and he will say, since it is so ill a place for man and beast, it must be made desolate. What must be will be."
"Hai! hai!" cried the man, lifting his hands, "how should a dead camel breathe again the breath of life, and evil-doers become good?"