But then—he told himself hastily—he had seen Mah Soung die. Who but he had seen her die? She had died with her adoring eyes and her slender yellow fingers uplifted to him as this girl's eyes and fingers were lifted to the sacred image.
A curious qualm took him, one of those turns of sick uncertainty that now and then seek out and wring the nerve of any white man who ventures a bit too far off white man's ground.
He was still staring as the worshiper rose from the mat, placed her water lily reverently on the altar and with obeisance and the murmured invocation that begins "Awgatha, by this offering I free me from the Three Calamities," faced about and glided in silence between Cloots and Moung Poh Sin and so on and out of the chapel and out of their ken forever.
She did not notice either man. She was quite unconscious of them. They had spoken in a hill dialect, all incomprehensible to her.... She was not Mah Soung, of course—though Cloots wiped a brow gone damp and chill.
"I have learned," continued the headman of Apyodaw—"I have learned how my child died—"
Cloots regained his speech in a curt laugh.
"What is that to me, old man? Yesterday's rice is neither eaten nor paid for twice."
"There remains, however, Shway, every man's account with the nats and such guarding spirits as may be; and their just pay is taken always in due course."
"Do they ask more than thee for a daughter? Thy payment was the highest market rate, at least—But again I say, stand aside. I weary of thee, Moung Poh Sin."
But Moung Poh Sin did not move.