"You haven't told me where you found Paddy?" he remarked after a pause.
"Oh, that was easy," she said. "Ah Sing has a station a little way this side of the Sadong country—"
Peter Gross nodded.
"I knew that he would go there. So I followed. When I got there Ah Sing was loading his proa with stores. I learned that your boy was a prisoner in one of the houses of his people. I went to Ah Sing and begged his life. I told him he was sacred to Djath, that the Dyaks of Bulungan thought him very holy indeed. Ah Sing was very angry. He stormed about the loss of his proa and refused to listen to me. He said he would hold the boy as a hostage.
"That night I went to the hut and found one of my people on guard. He let me in. I cut the cords that bound the boy, dyed his face brown and gave him a woman's dress. I told him to wait for me in the forest until he heard my cry. The guard thought it was me when he left."
Her voice drooped pathetically.
"They brought me to Ah Sing. He was very angry, he would have killed me, I think, if he had dared. He struck me—see, here is the mark." She drew back the sleeve of her kabaya and revealed a cut in the skin with blue bruises about it. Peter Gross became very white and his teeth closed together tightly.
"That is all," she concluded.
There was a long silence. Koyala covertly studied the resident's profile, so boyish, yet so masterfully stern, as he gazed into the forest depths. She could guess his thoughts, and she half-smiled.
"When you left, I promised you that you should have a reward—anything that you might name and in my power as resident to give," Peter Gross said presently.