“Is it near here, then, that you live, my Tcharn?” she enquired.
“Very near, my Princess.”
“But tell us,” I cried, unable to control myself longer, “did you find many of the white pebbles in this cavity, and did you take them all away?”
“Yes,” he answered readily, with a nod of his small head; “I found them and I took them away, and they were many.”
“But why did you take them?” asked the girl, who, without knowing the value to us of the stones, was able to sympathize with us in our bitter disappointment.
Tcharn was thoughtful. He sat upon the stump and for a moment studied the various faces turned toward him.
“Some time ago,” said he, “a white man came to this valley, which our laws forbid the whites to enter. Perhaps he did not know that I rule the forest which is my home—that I am the Master Workman of the Techla nation. Why should he know that? But the white beast was well aware that his race is by us hated and detested”—here he cast a sinister glance at Duncan and myself—“and barred from our domain. He sneaked in like a jackal, hiding himself by day while by night he prowled around upon all fours, gathering from off the ground the pebbles which our master the king has forbidden any man to see or to touch.
“Day after day I watched the white man at his unlawful toil. I sent tidings to Nalig-Nad, the king, who laughed at the cowardly intruder, and bade me continue to watch and to notify him if the beast tried to escape.
“Finally he saw my face among the trees, and it frightened him. He prepared to run away, and buried all the pebbles he had found under the moss beside this stump. Then he slunk from the valley and I let him go; for the king had been notified and would look after him.”
This relation proved to us the honesty of the German’s story. We knew well the rest of the tragic tale, and were just then more deeply interested in the loss of the diamonds.