that exchange of glances the inquiry was adjourned again to the next day.  The white men began to troop out at once.  Jim had been told to stand down some time before, and was able to leave amongst the first.  I saw his broad shoulders and his head outlined in the light of the door, and while I made my way slowly out talking with some one—­some stranger who had addressed me casually—­I could see him from within the court-room resting both elbows on the balustrade of the verandah and turning his back on the small stream of people trickling down the few steps.  There was a murmur of voices and a shuffle of boots.

’The next case was that of assault and battery committed upon a money-lender, I believe; and the defendant—­a venerable villager with a straight white beard—­sat on a mat just outside the door with his sons, daughters, sons-in-law, their wives, and, I should think, half the population of his village besides, squatting or standing around him.  A slim dark woman, with part of her back and one black shoulder bared, and with a thin gold ring in her nose, suddenly began to talk in a high-pitched, shrewish tone.  The man with me instinctively looked up at her.  We were then just through the door, passing behind Jim’s burly back.

’Whether those villagers had brought the yellow dog with them, I don’t know.  Anyhow, a dog was there, weaving himself in and out amongst people’s legs in that mute stealthy way native dogs have, and my companion stumbled over him.  The dog leaped away without a sound; the man, raising his voice a little, said with a slow laugh, “Look at that wretched cur,” and directly afterwards we became separated by a lot of people pushing in.  I stood back for a moment against the wall while the stranger managed to get down the steps and disappeared.  I saw Jim spin round.  He made a step forward and barred my way.  We were alone; he glared at me with an air of stubborn resolution.  I became aware I was being held up, so to speak, as if in a wood.  The verandah was empty by then, the noise and movement in court had ceased:  a great silence fell upon the building, in which, somewhere far within, an oriental voice began to whine abjectly.  The dog, in the very act of trying to sneak in at the door, sat down hurriedly to hunt for fleas.

’"Did you speak to me?” asked Jim very low, and bending forward, not so much towards me but at me, if you know what I mean.  I said “No” at once.  Something in the sound of that quiet tone of his warned me to be on my defence.  I watched him.  It was very much like a meeting in a wood, only more uncertain in its issue, since he could possibly want neither my money nor my life—­nothing that I could simply give up or defend with a clear conscience.  “You say you didn’t,” he said, very sombre.  “But I heard.”  “Some mistake,” I protested, utterly at a loss, and never taking my eyes off him.  To watch his face was like watching a darkening sky before a clap of thunder, shade upon shade imperceptibly coming on, the doom growing mysteriously intense in the calm of maturing violence.