falls flat on their faces. Then I sends a letter
to Dravot, wherever he be by land or by
sea.”

At the risk of throwing the creature out of
train I interrupted,—“How could you write
a letter up yonder?”

“The letter?—Oh! — The letter! Keep
looking at me between the eyes, please. It
was a string-talk letter, that we’d learned
the way of it from a blind beggar in the
Punjab.”

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