“Your religion forbids you to take life?”

“That’s true; I’ve not tasted meat for years, but there’s not a word to be said agin fish or an odd egg.”

“Tell me something more about your new faith!”

“Well now, let me think,” said the pongye meditatively.  “We have no regular service for marriage or burial, and no preaching.  We keep the five great rules—­poverty, chastity, honesty, truth, and respect all life.  There are two hundred and twenty-seven precepts besides.  Most men can say them off out of the big book of the Palamauk, and there are stacks and stacks—­thousands of stacks—­of sacred writings, but I just stick to the five commandments, the path of virtue and the daily prayers.  The singing and chanting is in Pali—­a wonderful fine, loud language.  Many of the pongyes is teachers, for every boy in Burma passes through their hands; but I’m no schoolmaster, though I was once a clerk in the Orderly room.  I could not stand the gabble of them scholars, all roaring out the same words at the top of their voices for hours together.”

“I can’t imagine how you pass your time,” remarked Shafto, “or how you stand the idleness—­a man like you who were accustomed to an active life.”

“Oh, I get through me day all right.  In the early morning there’s prayers and a small refreshment, and I sit and meditate; the young fellows, like novices, sweep and carry water and put flowers about the Buddha; then we all go with our bowls in our hands, parading through the village, looking neither right nor left, but we get all we want and more—­for giving is a great merit.  When we return to the kyoung we have our big midday meal, and then for a few hours I meditate again.  The life suits me.  It’s a different country from India, with its blazing sun and great bare plains; there the people seldom has a smile on them.  Here they are always laughing; here all is green and beautiful, with fine aisy times for flowers and birds and beasts.  There’s peace and kindness.  Oh! it’s a fine change from knocking about in barracks and cantonments, drilling and route-marching and sweating your soul out.  By the way, have ye the talisman I give you?”

“If you mean the brown stone—­yes.”

“That stone was slipped into my begging-bowl one day.”

“Not much of a find as an eatable!”

“That is so, though according to fairy tales the likes has dropped out of people’s mouths before now.  Ye may not suspicion the truth, but it’s a fine big ruby!  I believe it was found stuck in red mud in the ruby district, and someone who had a wish for me dropped it into the patta, and I—­who have a wish for you—­pass it on.”

“But if it is so valuable I could not dream of accepting such a gift,” protested Shafto.  “You will have to take it back—­thanks awfully, all the same.”

“Oh, ye never rightly know the price of them stones till they are cut; but the knowledgeable man I showed it to said it might be worth a couple of thousand pounds, and I’ve come to tell ye this—­so that ye can turn it into coin—­and if ye wanted to get out of Burma, there ye are!”