“Loose talk, Mung Baw, and you a Buddhist priest!  I’m astonished!”

“Yes, talk straight out of Fraser Street, my son.  Many of our priests are holy saints; altogether too good to live; with no thought whatever of the world—­given over entirely to prayer and self-denial, blameless and without one wicked thought; but there does be others that is totally different.  ’Tis the same in a regiment—­good soldiers and blackguards.  Some of the pongyes, when the prayers is done, spend all their days gossiping, chewing betel nut and raking through bazaar—­mud!” Then suddenly he leant forward and stared at his companion as if he were searching for something in his face, as he asked:  “Do you happen to know a girl called ’Ma Chit’?”

Shafto moved uneasily in his creaking wicker chair; after a moment’s hesitation he replied: 

“Yes, I know her.”

“Don’t let her put the ‘Comether’ on you!  These Burmese dolls have a wonderful way with them.  She’s a gabby little monkey, and they say she has chucked Bernard and taken a terrible fancy to you!  I would be main sorry to see you mixed up with one of these young devils—­for I know you are a straight-living gentleman.”

“There is not the smallest chance of my being what you call ‘mixed up’ with any young devil,” said Shafto in a sulky voice.  “As for Ma Chit—­she is not the sort you suppose.”

“Oh, may be not,” rejoined the pongye in a dubious tone.  “Still, I know Burma—­lock, stock and barrel, and a sight better nor you.  Av course, I never spake to a woman and give them all a wide berth—­but I cannot keep me ears shut.  Listen to me, sir.  These young torments have no scruple.  Ma Chit is dead set on you, and that’s the pure truth.  Now, there’s one thing I ask and beg—­never take or smoke a cigarette she might offer.”

“Not likely!  I only smoke Egyptians, or a pipe.  But tell me—­why am I to refuse Ma Chit’s cigarettes?”

“The reason is this, and a good one—­these black scorpions employ what they call ‘love charms.’  Oh yes, laugh, laugh, laugh away!  But one of these charms would soon make you laugh the wrong side of your mouth.  They are deadly, let me tell you; a cigarette loaded with a certain drug has been the ruin of more than one fine young fellow.  I disremember the name of the stuff—­it begins with an ‘M,’ and is surely made in hell itself, for it drives a man stark mad.  Once he smokes it he falls into a pit and is lost for ever, body and soul.”

“Come, I say, isn’t this a bit too thick, Mung Baw?”

“Well, you ask the doctors.  There’s a good few cases of lunacy and suicide in this country—­all caused by a love charm; so when Ma Chit sidles up, showing her teeth, and offers you a smoke—­you will know what to do.  Now,” concluded the visitor, scrambling to his feet, “I must be on the move.  I am stopping for a while at the big Pongye Kyoung, near the Turtle Tank, and if you should happen to be riding round that way, we might have a talk on this cocaine business.  If I am to go into it, neck and crop, I can’t be coming about here—­as it would excite suspicion.”