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It was true that Langur Dass understood more of the ways of the forest people than any other hillman in the encampment. But his caste was low, and he was drunken and careless and lazy beyond words, and the hunters had mostly only scorn for him.

And besides, his old love for Langur Dass had never been forgotten. It all returned, full and strong as ever. For an elephant never can forget. It was not one of the man-herd that stood pleading before him. It was one of his own jungle people, just as, deep in his heart, he had always known. So with one motion light as air, he swung him gently to his shoulder.

Am I to see these brown pigs put chains around him, in the moment of his power? A king, falling to the place of a slave? Muztagh, we will see what can be done! Muztagh, my king, my pearl, my pink baby, for whom I dug grass in the long ago! Thy Langur Dass is old, and his whole strength is not that of thy trunk, and men look at him as a worm in the grass.

These commemorate the days when such defences surrounded the villages on all sides to keep off human enemies, and they are now a symbol to ward off sickness and dangers to life from the wild animals of the forest. The langur required for the purpose is hunted down some days before, but should it be found impossible to catch one, a brown monkey may take its place; a hulock may not be used."

He paused. "That's it," John said. "There's another part of it that says something about 'all earth being servant'; how does it go?" Brennan continued: "By all that lights our daily life Or works our lifelong woe, From Boileaugunge to Simla Downs And those grim glades below, Where, heedless of the flying hoof And clamor overhead, Sleep, with the grey langur for guard, Our very scornful Dead.

Langur asked cunningly. "Maybe." One does not throw away rupees in Upper Burma. Within the hour the signal of "Maîl, maîl!" The hills grew full of sound. The beaters sprang up with firebrand and rifle, and closed swiftly about the herd. The animals moved slowly at first. The time was not quite ripe to throw them into a panic.

"You will be silent while I speak," Ahmad Din went on. Langur grew silent as commanded, but his thoughts were flowing backward twenty years, to days at the elephant lines in distant hills. Muztagh was the one living creature that in all his days had loved Langur Dass. The man shut his eyes, and his limbs seemed to relax as if he had lost all interest in the talk.

"If the drive is on, perhaps you will give your servant a place among the beaters." The circle turned and stared at him. It was one of the stories of Langur Dass that he never partook in the elephant hunts. Evidently poor living had broken his resolutions. "You shall have your wish, if you know how to keep a closed mouth," Ahmad Din replied. "There are other hunting parties in the hills."

And Muztagh did come trumpeting crashing like an avalanche, with Langur Dass hard after him afraid, now that he had done the trick. And hot on the trail of Langur Dass ran Ahmad Din, with his knife drawn not meaning to let that prize be lost to him at less than the cost of the trickster's life. But it was not written that the knife should ever enter the flesh of Langur Dass.

The elephant slowly turned his head and looked scornfully at the group of beaters bearing down on Langur Dass, murder shining no less from their knives than from their lighted eyes. "Take me," the old man pleaded; "thy herd is gone." The elephant seemed to know what he was asking. He had lifted him to his great shoulders many times, in the last days of his captivity.