“No, no,” replied my uncle, busy with his letters and the candle. The big Oriental did not move.
“Reflect, Sahib,” he went on. “We are entering an immense peril. The thing that will be hunting us has innumerable agencies everywhere in its service. If it shall discover that we have falsified its symbols, it will search the earth for us. And what are we, Sahib, against this thing? It does not die, nor wax old, nor grow weary.”
“The lad knows nothing,” replied my uncle, “and old Andrew will keep silent.”
“Without trouble, Sahib,” the creature continued, “I can put the young one beyond all knowledge and the old one beyond all speech. Is it permitted?”
My uncle got up from the fireplace, for he had finished with his work.
“No,” he said, “let there be an end of it.”
He turned about, and under the glimmer of the candle I could see that the man had changed; his big pale face was grim with some determined purpose, and there was about him the courage and the authority of one who, after long wavering, at last hazards a desperate venture. He broke the glass box and put the Buddha into his pocket.
“It is good silver,” he said, “and it has served its purpose.”
The Oriental got softly onto his feet like a great toy of cotton wood. His face remained in its expression of equanimity, and he added no further word of gesture to his argument.
My uncle held the door open for him to pass out, and after that he extinguished the candle and followed, closing the door noiselessly behind him.