Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/373

 some ordeal. Upon a certain evening, therefore, it befell that the Maha Mentri was shot through the flooring while he lay abed in another inan's house by the aggrieved owner thereof ably and actively as- sisted by two other injured husbands, who were quite convinced that there was not room enough for the Maha Mentri and themselves upon the surface of the same planet.

Everybody knew the identity of the Maha Men- tri's executioners, and the king, who was fond of his minister, would dearly have liked to punish then with a lingering dicath. They chanced, however, to be under the protection of a young prince with whom, for political reasons, the king could not afford to precipitate a quarrel; so he and his advisers professed to be lost in speculations as to who could have been so unmannerly as to shoot the pions Maha Mentri in three several places and at that the matter rested in spite of the clamorous protests of the dead man's relatives.

Very soon the glad tidings of the Maha Mentri's death reached Pahang, and the ma'iong people packed their gear and started back for their own country, leaving many men and women lamenting, and a set of utterly demoralized villages behind them.

Leh went back by sea with half a score of broken hearts in his wallet; and soon after his arrival lie was appointed to the post of court minstrel and warden of the royal dancing girls. For the Kelantan to which he had returned was a very different place from the land he had quitted when he started out