"It is great honour," replied the small, wizened old man, with the laugh. "What of thine own house by the river?"
"My limbs fail me. To-night my assistant supplies the needs of those who ask, for I had a business."
"And I trust thy business hath prospered with thee?"
Leh Shin stretched himself out on a table near the door.
"I await the hour of prosperity,"—he twisted a needle in the brown mass that was offered to him and held it over the lamp. "Evil are the days of a life whilst an old grudge burns like hot charcoal in the heart."
"It is even so," agreed the proprietor, and he hurried away from the noose of talk that Leh Shin would have cast around him.
The beggar, having followed Leh Shin as far as the opium den, returned along the Colonnade and knocked at the door of the house where Shiraz waited anxiously for his master.
"Is my bath prepared, Shiraz? I must wash before I sleep, and I shall sleep late."
Coryndon was weary. No one who has not watched through hours of strain and suspense knows the utter weariness of mind and body that follows upon the long effort of close attention, and he fell upon his bed in a huddled heap and slept for hour after hour, worn out in brain and body.