???
I remember that there had once come to
the office a blind man with a knotted twig
and a piece of string which he wound round
the twig according to some cypher of his
own. He could, after the lapse of days or
hours, repeat the sentence which he had
reeled up. He had reduced the alphabet to
eleven primitive sounds; and tried to teach
me his method, but failed.
???I sent that letter to Dravot,??? said Carnehan;
???and told him to come back because
this Kingdom was growing too big for me to
handle, and then I struck for the first valley,
to see how the priests were working. They
called the village we took along with the
Chief, Bashkai, and the first village we took,
Er-Heb. The priest at Er-Heb was doing all
right, but they had a lot of pending cases
about land to show me, and some men from
another village had been firing arrows at
night. I went out and looked for that village
and fired four rounds at it from a thousand
yards. That used all the cartridges I
cared to spend, and I waited for Dravot, who
had been away two or three months, and I
kept my people quiet.
???One morning I heard the devil??™s own
noise of drums and horns, and Dan Dravot
marches down the hill with his Army and a
tail of hundreds of men, and, which was the
most amazing??”a great gold crown on his
head. ???My Gord, Carnehan,??™ says Daniel,
???this is a tremenjus business, and we??™ve got
the whole country as far as it??™s worth having.
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