WANG THE NINTH

BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR
POLITICAL:
Manchu and Muscovite
The Re-Shaping of the Far East (2 volumes)
The Truce in the East and its Aftermath
The Coming Struggle in Eastern Asia
The Conflict of Colour
The Fight for the Republic in China
The Truth about China and Japan
ROMANTIC:
Indiscreet Letters from Peking
The Forbidden Boundary
The Human Cobweb
The Unknown God
The Romance of a Few Days
The Revolt
The Eternal Priestess
The Altar Fire
Wang the Ninth. The Story of a Chinese Boy

WANG THE NINTH

THE STORY OF A CHINESE BOY

BY

PUTNAM WEALE

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1920

Copyright, 1920,
By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc.

VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY
BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK

PREFACE

This book is a partial explanation of the phenomenon of China which seems so strange when curtly dealt with in the daily press.

It has quality of being true and should therefore be known.

Peking, July, 1919

WANG THE NINTH

CHAPTER I

Wang the Ninth was born a few years before the end of the nineteenth century in a village called prosaically in the vernacular Ten Li Hamlet because it lay ten li or Chinese miles from the great imperial highway. He was the eighth child; that was why, according to immemorial custom, he was called the Ninth, since the numeral eight added to his patronymic signified that opprobrious epithet term "tortoise," a nickname which no Chinese could survive. When he was little more than three and scarcely weaned (for the children of this land are suckled until they can run) he was unceremoniously put on a creaking wheelbarrow and trundled off into the unknown.

This inconsequential hegira was the beginning of his great adventures,—and was the natural aftermath of a curiously swift tragedy in an environment saturated with inaction.

Famine had suddenly descended on Ten Li Hamlet, and his brothers and sisters, having been leased or sold one after another to neighbours (you can use whichever expression you like), he and his father had become the last survivors in a disrupted family. For his mother, too, had tired of privation. She had sat ominously quiet for one whole week and had then slipped away with a travelling blacksmith, who had been working for a season not fifty feet from the family home of mud-bricks and who disappeared as he had come—like a wraith in the night.

It was this which had been the last straw for the father—not the hunger. For, he, too, was a blacksmith by trade. Added to the shame in his bosom for the beggarly condition to which he had been reduced, there had come a volcanic outburst of hurt professional pride. He was totally unable to reconcile himself to the idea that he had been abandoned in favour of another such as he—and for no better reason that there was want in the land. For there was always want; never could he remember a time when the people were not a-hungering, marching through the country in ragged bands, and spreading dismay wherever they camped.

So one dawn he had sullenly dragged out two baskets, put his last child into one, thrown on top of him some spare clothing, placed his few pots and pans and the implements of his trade (including the unwieldy bellows) in the other, and had marched down the rutted village road shouting curses on every one and declaring that he was shaking the dust of the poverty-stricken place for ever off his feet.

Thus had he gone angrily and vigorously, full of resolution, until he had covered the ten li which separated the village from the great highway. Then, when he had seen the broad road leading to the capital, and the carts and the travellers in their handsome clothing, and the long camel-trains with their rich loads of merchandise, a sense of unfamiliarity and loneliness had suddenly overwhelmed him, and he had sat down and wept loudly and unrestrainedly in the manner all Chinese will do.

Nobody had minded his weeping—not even the child in the basket who continued to sleep calmly and impassively, its pinched face turned in the direction of Heaven. Why indeed should any one mind? As far as the eye could reach there was nothing but brown country—the great Northern plains stretched into infinity and looked upon this evanescent emotion much as the Sphinx surveys the shifting desert sands. A little while you may weep, a little while you may laugh, they seemed to say; then the great silence which covers us all....

So presently the man had stopped and become angry once more. He rose to his feet, tightened his cord belt, and smearing the tears from his seamed face, surveyed the world indifferently. Somehow he would discover a brighter future.

In the basket the child lay in peace. The rising sun pushed golden fingers through the bamboo-work as if to caress its innocence. The father watched with eyes which saw and yet did not see; for he was too simple to know more than that a child is a great blessing, a jewel, because it is of one's flesh and a kind of indefinite prolongation of one's endeavours to conquer the devil. Disaster had been for him like a huge river in spate which had rushed down on him and left him marooned on a tiny rocking island in the very centre. Now he saw a causeway mysteriously growing out of these dread waters: and in his vague fancies he associated this with the presence of his child.

Presently as he sat gazing there was a thin cry. The little legs kicked with vigour, and the arms with their clenched fists sought to throw off the clothing.

"Ba-ba," wailed the eighth child who was called the Ninth, now thoroughly awake. "I am hungry. Give me to eat."

"Wait," said the father roughly yet kindly, brought back from his dreams. "Soon you shall eat."

He conjured up from the bottom of the other basket a big bowl half full of a sort of porridge made from little millet, which was cold and distasteful but which was all that he had. It was the work of a few minutes to light the tiny portable whiteclay stove which he had included in his salvage and which even the poorest in the land always possess. Soon his cooking was done and the child was eating and had become content.

"Ba-ba," it lisped again, struggling to get up. "Where do we go?"

"To the city," grumbled the father, beginning to pack up again. "To the city. Stay quiet. We have far to go."

Already he was off, trundling the wheelbarrow and still eating as he walked. The sun rose higher and higher and perspiration beaded his forehead, but now there was no question of turning back. He was following the mysterious causeway which led to his destiny. On and on he tramped, pushing the creaking wheelbarrow through the chasm of space and sometimes exchanging remarks with the passing muleteers and camel-drivers. Traffic was growing heavier as the city was approached and a veil of dust hung in the air. The highway was strung across the plain like a great frayed rope, which sometimes tightened to a rigid straight line, and sometimes was all knots and twists invented to dismay those who were weary and ill at ease.

In the middle of the day the man lay down and slept under a tree; but ere two hours had passed he was up again and pressing on.

The sun flared out; the stars twinkled brightly in the skies; and still he did not stop. Hardy as only a peasantry can be who know no comforts, he pressed on tirelessly—determined to reach his objective. The creaking wheel was a veritable lullaby to the child who slept as peacefully as if in its mother's arms, hardly stirring in spite of the bumping, always stretched motionless on its little back.

On and on in the darkness, one hour, two hours, three hours, four. Then at last in the middle of the night, when full forty miles had been covered, a low blaze of lights and the shadow of a great city-wall.

The man stopped abruptly and the jerk woke up the child.

"Ba-ba," came the inevitable cry.

He bent over it.

"The city," he exclaimed in his rude, guttural voice, "would you see the city?"

He picked up his son and holding him tightly in his arms, pointed with one finger.

"There, you see ... the lights and the city-wall. Beyond there is a great gate through which one passes but which is now closed."

The child no longer fretted: it was staring silently, drinking in everything as if its very life depended upon strict attention. The father felt its little body taut under the ragged blue clothes. Some new impulse possessed it. It leaned towards the city, as if a mysterious force were pulling.

"Well, what do you say?" inquired the father at last, feeling the need for a little talk.

"It is good," said the child very gravely, as only a very old nation can speak. "It is good," it repeated, nodding its head after the manner of its elders—"We shall find food."

Then it sank back content on the straw in the basket, and the father seizing the handles of the wheelbarrow pushed clumsily on.

CHAPTER II

In the morning the unaccustomed roar and noise of the city gate woke up the sleeping child. No comforting father's voice, however, answered its first stirrings and cries; so after a while the philosophic instinct of the race asserted itself and the boy lay quiet, his astonished eyes taking in everything around him.

In the small bare room there was no living thing save a cat of nondescript colour sitting on a box and licking its paws. The broken paper depending from the lattice-work of the windows, however, flapped to and fro cheerfully and briskly; and the rising sun which was peeping through the gaps in the paper seemed ready to invade the whole room. In one corner were the two baskets and the litter of blacksmith's tools which had travelled so far. Close by was a huge primitive musket and a belt stuffed full of the formidable cartridges of a forgotten period. But the wheelbarrow had vanished and so had the father.

Staring blankly at all this—particularly at the colossal firearm—the child finally half-rolled and half-tumbled to the earthen floor from the low k'ang on which it had been put to sleep the night before and began tottering towards the door.

This it managed to open. Then very fearfully it peeped out as if it had opened a veritable Pandora's box.

Instead of trouble, however, the child saw outside a bare waste, and beyond many people and many carts passing endlessly along a raised roadway on which were also posted all sorts of vendors loudly calling their wares. The rumble and clatter of the carts, and the cries of the vendors never ceased: they seemed a veritable brook of life which went on for ever. Enchanted by this animation little Wang remained stockstill, wondering what would happen next. Curiosity consumed him: he observed every detail with powers of observation only given to the exceptional. There was nothing that escaped his quick, tireless black eyes. What a wonderful world he had been brought to!

Presently an old man carrying a portable kitchen on a pole stopped quite close by; and depositing his paraphernalia started advertising what he had for sale in a thin raucous voice, putting one finger into an ear as he called so as to sense the quality of his tune from the vibrations. Children and women came slowly out of neighbouring houses; then, after a pause, one or two decided to eat and edged up to the old man with money in their hands.

Little Wang, nothing loth, cautiously joined them. He was so small that he stood there for a long time totally unobserved, looking at each disappearing mouthful with envious eyes, and wondering what he should do to be fed like these lucky ones. Presently the old man, having finished his work, turned to him.

"And you?" he inquired in a matter-of-fact way, treating the child as if he were a grown-up.

"I, too, am hungry," announced little Wang gravely.

At this everybody laughed spontaneously as if something very witty had been said; but the child only stood there frowning, showing traces of the resolute character which so quickly developed by not flinching at an inch.

"You are hungry!" echoed the old man quizzically, "well, well—that is as it should be. When one is small it is always so: only with age does the appetite lessen. And where is the money your mother gave you that I may feed you?"

Little Wang shook his head.

"I have no money and no mother," he replied. Then gaining courage he added brusquely. "But give me to eat?"

He held out a hand, watching the vendor narrowly.

"Oh, oh," laughed the old man, "you would eat free! Things are indeed coming to a pass when I who am poor beyond estimate am forced to feed all who come near me.... Still here—" With a flourish of his big copper ladle he dipped very deeply into his cauldron, as if generous feelings possessed him, bringing out notwithstanding the smallest possible amount of his hot mess by means of a quick turn of the handle. Then he partly filled a small coarse bowl, passing it to the child with the manner of the tradesman. Long experience had taught him that the farthing owed him would come back to him soon enough,—with much interest.

"Well, is it good?" he remarked approvingly when the sturdy child had swallowed down every drop with wolfish rapidity. "I see you could eat more. But I must have my money first. I, too, live from day to day." He turned to the others. "Whose child is this?"

A woman with a baby in her arms edged up:

"A man arrived, so I have heard, in the middle of the night and found a place to sleep with one of the militia. He had a child in a basket, it was also said. This must be him."

The small boy stood there crossly twisting his fingers because he was still hungry, and also because he hated being the object of such attentions. Everybody was looking at him now with curiosity, wondering at his independence and his lack of fear and asking questions.

Quickly he answered, hating to tell anything and concealing much. Presently, bending down on the ground, he began playing with some little stones, not paying any further attention to the scene around him. The other children observed his antics with curious eyes: this ugly, strong, tiny boy, who had appeared during the night and who seemed to belong to nobody, strangely fascinated them.

After a long interval one of them approached him, and a little timidly offered him a piece of flour-cake. Little Wang took it without a word of thanks and bolted it down like a savage young thing, resuming his playing as soon as he had finished.—Then another, not to be outdone, gave him a little from his little bowl of congee, and squatting down beside him tried to talk to him in small baby words. The women and the old man drifted away, but all the children remained and were joined by others, who imitated what the newcomer was doing. Little Wang was making a regular pattern on the ground with his stones, working out a design from something he had once seen and not forgotten, so absorbed that he paid no attention to anything else.

The others continued to imitate him—disputing who should have the place next to him. Little Wang, by reason of that mysterious quality which sets one man over others, was already beginning to assert his leadership which he soon made legendary in the neighbourhood.

CHAPTER III

Within three days his father had set up a forge inside this rude hut at the city gate and had commenced turning out quantities of coarse iron nails for the cart trade. The clang of his hammer sounded far into the night, and the child fell asleep to that jarring music just as he often awoke to it. The steady pant of the bellows—worked by a small boy who was paid three farthings a day for his labour—and the glowing heat of the charcoal, were as much part of his life as the sparrows chirping on the waste outside the door. Very early he understood the trick of picking up live embers in his fingers as his father often did: if you are quick that is as easily done as putting your hand into ice-cold water.

There was food in plenty, too; the boy could eat all day long, and he grew stronger and bigger almost visibly. Not only was there food at home; there was plenty to be picked up along every foot of the stretch of highway leading to the frowning battlements of the city. No one would begrudge a child a bite when he announced as calmly as little Wang always did that he was hungry.

Soon he became friends with fifty men who gained their living by peddling cakes to the tide of traffic which endlessly swept in and out of the capital. When their baskets were sold out, it was always he whom they allowed to pick up the morsels from the bottoms until every crumb was gone. His quickness and his wisdom, in spite of his baby ways, delighted a people who see truth in common-sense.

Sometimes, too, he found money—those holed coins of infinitesimal value which the people used. He early discovered that if he searched carefully just beside the roadway, sooner or later coins which had been dropped by country bumpkins, coming out of the city the worse for their holiday-making, would be brought to light. He soon evolved a system of his own for working over the rutted roadway as a miner pans the gravel of a gold-bearing stream; and whenever he made a find his joy and excitement were amazing.

Each day and each month taught him something new. The other children of the city gate were filled with open admiration for everything he did: he learnt so fast every lesson from the great Book of Life spread before his eyes that he grew apace in wisdom. Always attentive and observant, nothing escaped him.

Especially remarkable was his power over animals. All living things seemed to claim relationship with him, and he never abused these ties. Before he was seven he knew how to catch rats with his bare hands, and how to approach vicious camels, who if you are not careful can display a savagery terrifying to all but their drivers. As for birds he had the strange power of talking to them until their fears were gone. Then, as warily as a cat he would pounce on them, catching fledgelings as easily as a man with a line will catch fish.

Everybody here kept birds and trained them to fly from their tasselled bird-sticks into the air and catch grain and seeds cast up to them. The whole population gave itself up to this sport. In the summer evenings a stream of men carrying cages or tasselled sticks, with their birds lightly tied to them, came out of the city with their pets, and there were great competitions with an amazing rivalry aroused, particularly in singing and grain-catching. Hooded falcons, with their cruel eyes looking sharply at everything, might also still be seen in numbers in those days; they were carried by richly-attired men far out into the country where they were cast at sparrows, the greatest zest being shown in this cruel sport.

In such surroundings the boy never lacked companionship; every hour had its adventures, just as every season had its especial delights. The cruel winters, with their fierce winds brought ice and snow, but then there was ice-sliding on a frozen pool in which he soon excelled. Summer, with its blinding sunlight, allowed him to run naked and discover teeming life in every stagnant pond. He knew that the first thunder-storm would magically turn the whisking tadpoles into croaking frogs. And after the thunder-storms would come the soft rains. Then, he would sit hunched up singing to himself a rude little rhyme which all the children sang in imitation of the frogs:

Qua-qua,
Chi'rh hsia
Mi'rh hai hsia:
Qua-qua,—

Which was simply:

"Today it rains, oh, frog;
Tomorrow it will rain also."

Sometimes he would sing this so long that he would lull himself to sleep by his music; and waking up with a start he would find that night had come....

In cursing, too, he became royally proficient. Before he was eight he could out-curse any camel-driver, often bringing a clumsy lout half-asleep between the humps of his beast to the ground frantic with rage at the insults hurled at him for no reason at all by his shrill treble. His father would then beat him if he happened to be near; but he was swift of foot and very nimble—and hard to catch.

Sometimes, too, unaccountable gloom would come upon him. That was mainly because his father, being tired of work, would drink heated wine in a little pewter cup until he was quite drunk and then sit taciturn day after day only bursting into words to upbraid his wife for her base desertion of him years ago. A sort of family loyalty and pride forbade the boy from mentioning this to any one, although the neighbourhood knew all about it. Indeed he would fight any one who brought up the subject: one day he attacked a giant of a man, who had made some remarks about his maternity, biting him on the knee so badly that he was picked up and thrown fully fifteen feet for his pains and nearly crippled from the experience.

And yet even that rude awakening never taught him prudence. For the whole region round the city gate was his domain and impelled him to adventures and combats. There were camels and temples and fields and encampments of armed men, and pilgrims and caravans—all the primitive bustle of the fourteenth century living on at the very threshold of the twentieth century and demanding his attention. Before he was nine he had seen a score of men publicly executed by a man in a red coat with a huge sword, and had watched with strangely staring eyes the stricken heads roll in the dust. Everything that happened was to him a phenomenon demanding inquiry; and on each and everything he bestowed the flexible methods of the empiricist, thereby gaining in natural wisdom. He insulted the schoolboys going to school with their school-books under their arms, because instinctively he believed that the knowledge they were acquiring was only a conceit which carried them away from the workings of nature around them; he insulted them in many ways and with many words until one day a youthful scholar who was tired of his tirade turned on him and called back: "You—do you know what category you belong to? To the animals who merely hunger and thirst and know no books—"

It was the ironical laughter of the passers-by which henceforth made him leave youthful scholarship alone.

He suddenly realized that there might be something in learning.

CHAPTER IV

The circumstances surrounding his first meeting with foreigners—those white-faced men and women of western race who had been nicknamed by the common people "foreign devils"—had a tremendous influence on him.

From his earliest years he could remember being half-frightened, half-fascinated by the awesome tales which were current regarding their strength and their violence—and of the dread things they did to children if they fell into their clutches. No mad whisperings among illiterate Russian peasants leading to pogroms of the Jews could surpass these insiduous stories. Foreigners, it was said, when they wished powerful medicines, took the eyes of Chinese children and boiled them. They were also reported to cut up dead bodies, besides being willing to use their knives on the living whom they put to sleep with drugs and who woke up to find legs and arms missing....

In this way was the work of hospitals discredited—only the very poor and wretched dared to go near them. The "devils" represented a hideous force which so exercised the public mind that it had been always easy in the past to raise a riot against them on the slightest provocation. Parents never failed to threaten children who plagued them with the declaration that they would be handed over to the tender mercies of the first devil who was met with. This threat was worse than any possible chastisement. It instantly brought submission.

Little Wang had caught a distant glimpse of them several times passing in and out of the city gate; but like the other children he had immediately run away and hid himself until the coast was clear. Once, when there was no time to escape, a friendly cake-seller had taken hold of him and covered his eyes tightly with his hands so that "the malign influence" should not be transmitted to him through his vision. That action had so fascinated him that he had talked about nothing else for days. He even invented a game, in which he played the part of the foreigner, and all the children had to protect one another as the cake-seller had done from his influence when he approached.

Then had come the amazing adventure.

It was on a summer's afternoon, very late in the day when the August sun is still baking hot although it is about to set. All the world was drowsy and few were up and about. Stark-naked and supremely happy, he had wandered along the dusty highway into the country until he had come to a long irregular pond, full of stagnant water, with lilies growing in it, and frogs croaking their everlasting summer chorus. With the aid of a broken tool taken from his father's forge he had fashioned rudimentary boats and filled them with insects which tumbled in and out and fought one another and ended by dying the water-death.

Then, when he had tired of this sport, he had chased the slow and stupid dragon-flies with a stick on which was smeared bird-line borrowed from a neighbour, catching more than one by his surprising quickness. The diaphanous wings and the long shapely bodies provided him with new ideas: and with the aid of some strands of straw he had made for himself a crown of iridescent beauty—all shaking and moving with these creatures which he placed on his head, and which he thought entrancing.

As the sun sank lower and lower, the other children had wandered home, shrieked for by their mothers from the far distance who waved to them and threatened them to secure obedience. And because he had no mother to call him, he had mocked the others and settled down to play alone.

He was sitting in the dust of the highway, drawing patterns on the ground, with his dragonfly crown still about his ears, when the sound of strange voices and the stamp of hoofs in the great silence made him glance up. As he understood what it was he gasped aloud in his horror. For there almost on top of him—not more than twenty feet away—was a huge foreign-devil, with a yellow beard and a great whip in his hand riding on a big horse; and beside him on another horse was a woman-devil, all in white save for her hat, and a veil which fell around her neck.

For once in his life his nimble wits entirely deserted him. He was so stricken that he could neither think nor act. They had caught him out in the country—completely alone; there was not a soul to succour him.

Overcome and already feeling the malign influence striking down his spine, by a supreme effort he managed to wriggle away until he was out of their immediate way. But they had seen him: that was enough! They were making merry at his discomfiture, before they did something worse. The man was pointing at him, the woman was laughing.

As he cowered in the dust unable to move any further, he saw out of the corners of his eyes the foreign-devil drop his hand, put it into his pocket, pull it out quickly, and swing it fiercely towards him. There was a flash in the golden sunlight—a blinding flash. He closed his eyes and covered his head completely with his arms to meet the shock crushing the wriggling dragon-flies by this action. When he opened them, he was surprised to find himself alone and alive. The man and the woman were trotting their horses very fast and were rapidly becoming smaller in the distance. But there on the ground, almost at his knees, was a bright object. With one leap he was on it and had clutched it in his hand.

It was a piece of silver, quite an immense piece, very bright and new, worth he did not know how many score of the copper-cash.

Miracle of miracles!

For a moment he stood like that turning the coin over and over in his hand, not willing to believe his good-fortune, doubting whether it was really his, biting it to prove its worth. Then, as he saw the figures on horse-back fade away, a fever of excitement possessed him and he dashed madly home. To every one he met he shouted the miracle which had come to him, the silver coin. A foreign-devil had thrown it to him, with one sweep of the hand, like that! He gave an elaborate pantomime so that they should precisely understand the setting and the manner it all had come to pass. He let every person feel the coin and ring it and bite it. It was genuine beyond doubt; a dozen told him that; but regarding its precise value opinions differed.

At last he reached the doorway of the parental hut. His father was sitting there, still stripped to the waist, cooling himself after his arduous labours, at the forge. To him also in excited accents he told exactly what had happened—not once but many times, showing how he had crouched in the dust, how the coin had been thrown, how he had picked it up and his immense surprise.

A wondering crowd gathered. He was a hero, the head and front of all local interest. Nobody had ever heard of a story like that. The coin passed from hand to hand, was felt and appraised as it had never been appraised before. It was a dollar, a silver dollar. Then some one offered to exchange it—to give full value in copper cash.

The boy accepted the offer. His father, never saying a word, sat there puffing at his pipe, watching silently all the by-play. The boy was finally handed a double-string of cash; over a thousand coins, a veritable weight of wealth such as he had never felt before.

All evening he sat playing with the double-string, counting the coins to see that he had not been defrauded. He went to sleep with the money clutched across his chest, dreaming impossible dreams in which wealth rained on him in form of silver dollars.

CHAPTER V

Ever after that incident the world seemed different. The ugly, independent child, accustomed to the rigours of the daily struggle for existence—all the acerbities of a life so close to Nature that the people seemed to lie on our great universal mother's very bosom—this child understood in a flash that somehow it was not so with everybody. There were people who were rich; people who did not have to toil and moil—people who lived in plenty. He himself had been sufficiently strong to survive without trouble; but around him were spiritless children for ever whining and starving—breaking down and dying before the obstacles of life. This little world of elementary beings, living on the tide of life sweeping in and out of the city gate, had been his only lexicon; now he understood that there were other books.

From that day also the vague background of fear in which foreigners had stood suddenly disappeared. It was replaced by an all-consuming curiosity.

He never ceased asking questions regarding them, "the devils," as he still called them from force of habit. Were there many of them in the city—how did they live—why had they wealth—were there no poor ones among them?—these were some of the things he asked.

By dint of questioning, he slowly built up a sort of picture which was still like a dream. He was told that there were a hundred or two of them in the city and that they came from over the seas in vessels driven by steam, fire-wheel vessels they were called in the vernacular. He learnt the expression without knowing what it really signified, until one day he saw a rude native print of a sea-battle being sold by a pedlar who told him that these were illustrations of the foreign ships.

His interest was such that he stood in front of the man for ever so long. He memorized the outlines so well that he was soon able to draw in the dust a fire-wheel ship with a stone, which was so amazingly accurate that a number of passers-by commended him for his talent. The huge man with the yellow beard had come on one such as these, he thought to himself; these ships travelled hundreds of thousands of li, the pedlar had said. They often consumed a year in their voyages, and they could slay enormous numbers of people with their cannon which blazed forth their wrath if any one opposed them. In this twisted manner did the story of high sea navigation reach him.

These details delighted him and filled him with amazement. The power and novelty of it all enchained him and filled his brain. Sometimes, when he had swung himself up into a tree after a bird, he would fall into a day-dream, and sitting astride of a branch, would wonder if it would not be possible for him to get closer to these men and their many inventions. He would like to see their cannon exploding in wrath, and destroying every one so that the waters were filled with struggling beings as in the pedlar's print; it would be a spectacle worthy of being looked upon. Then, presently, he would turn his thoughts to silver and to a stream of coins. The coins would come like hail in his day-dream, and he would pick them up and buy everything that his heart hungered for,—singing-birds and sweetmeats and a cap with a long red tassel, not to speak of much mutton from the Mohammedan mutton-shops.

Once he started out to try and reach the foreign quarter in the city; but after a few miles the immensity of the great capital frightened him and he ran back home. His father cursed him for playing truant in this way, saying ruefully to the neighbours as he had already said many times: "This boy's courage is too great. His courage is a sad thing."

This censure, however, did not dishearten him. It merely instilled in him greater caution and redoubled his desire to carry out one day his great plan.

He was always watching for foreigners coming out of the city; whenever he detected one in the stream of traffic which was not often, he would follow as fast as his legs could run. But all the neighbourhood had heard of his good fortune, and many urchins imitated him. The foreigners were only irritated by these unaccustomed attentions and instead of giving money shook their whips at the pack at their heels and rode quickly away. Evidently there were limitations to their riches, the boy thought, or else their good-nature was hard to reach. In any case of silver dollars there was never a trace. Perhaps it needed something striking to attract their attention.

He reasoned this out by himself and determined to test it. He had stored away in secret hiding-places various treasures, such as birds and lizards and other delectable things; and now he set to work making attractive receptacles in which to place them. He stole empty tins from men who were careless, and with the aid of his father's tools made numerous holes so that his prey could be put inside and fed and properly exhibited. Soon he had a regular menagerie, properly housed. Then on the weekly holiday, on which the foreigners were apt to come out of the city, he disappeared far down the highway, going miles beyond the beat of every child in the neighbourhood, until he was lost in the country. Alone with his treasures he sat patiently waiting.

In the middle of the day he saw the first foreigners; they were in hooded carts, men and women together with servants accompanying them. As soon as the carts approached he dashed up, exhibiting what he had and offering his captives for sale. Something in his eagerness and in his strange wares evidently amused them. They called to one another laughingly and shook their heads. One more generous than the others threw a handful of cash on the ground.

When they had gone he carefully picked up every coin and counted them. It was not wonderful as a sum of money. Still it was something. The silver dollar, however, remained unapproachable in its especial niche....

CHAPTER VI

A long hard winter, with the world shrouded in snow, served to dim these impressions but not to efface them.

Wang the Ninth was now no longer a child but a growing boy on whom his father cast jealous looks—as on so much capital that was not bearing due interest. Occasionally by dint of blows and wrathful utterances he made the youth work at the forge, seating him at the first glimmering of dawn before the bellows and watching him so closely that there was never a chance of his stealing away to indulge in his eternal pranks.

When the North wind was blowing, and the highways were bare of traffic, it was not so bad to sit at this task and have the blaze of the white-hot embers warm him. Then the slow, regular pant of the bellows fused with the clang of hammer on the anvil and seemed to him the very incarnation of energy—of a force that drives things along. The boy would sit with his ugly, expressive face gazing straight in front of him. Grasping the wooden handle of the bellows firmly in both hands and stretching his legs wide apart, he would work mechanically, lost in his dreams. All sorts of things would pass in procession before the little leaping flames, the heat affording him a certain sensual satisfaction which expressed itself in the laziness with which he answered his father's occasional remarks.

He would dream that he was lying on soft cushions with all his heart's desires scattered around him. He would tip over piles of coins and watch them idly roll around too indifferent even to pick them up. Barmecide feasts of a nature satisfying even to his voracious appetite would rise before him—mutton and roast ducks and all manner of browned pork heaped on great platters just as they were at the marriage feasts of rich men. Sometimes these fancies became so real that the saliva would trickle down his chin; and his father, noticing it, would inquire what was the matter.

"I am hungry," he would answer laconically, refusing to make any confidences and returning to his dreams.

That was when the weather was bad and the bitter North winds blew.

But when the sun shone, even in cold winter it was almost impossible to keep the boy at his task; he escaped by the use of amazing stratagems, disappearing beyond all quest and only returning when it was dark. He would never tell his father where he went; even a beating would not make him confess. Why should he give away his secrets—all the wonderful hiding-places he had discovered, where he went with an impudence and a cunning that were sublime?

He knew, for instance, by going along the ice of the Imperial Canal, how to slip under the bars of the magnificent barge-house where the Imperial barges were docked all winter. He had at first not dared to do more than peer in—pretending, when any one appeared even in the far distance, that he had fallen down whilst indulging in the delectable pastime of sliding on the ice by means of an iron runner fastened to one foot as all the boys in the neighbourhood did. But that was in the early stages of the game. Soon he accustomed himself to pushing open impudently the sliding-bars; and then by creeping right inside along a narrow stone parapet he finally was actually on the barges. There he would sit himself on the broad comfortable seats, and for want of something better to do would roll about on them like a dog. Once he had asked a pedlar friend what would happen if any one were found inside the Imperial barge-house.

"He would be promptly killed," had answered the man. "But then nobody would dare such folly."

The reply had set him pondering. Of course, the guards might catch him one day: he did not wish to be killed.

After the pedlar's remark he used always to loiter past the guard-houses to see what the guards were doing. It was their amazing sloth which led him step by step to complete indifference. They were always sleeping or eating or going off into the city leaving the youngest recruit nominally on duty. Once he surprised them all drunk as a result of a weight-lifting contest with great stones, in which the losers had to pay the forfeit in wine. They were lying around the guard-house so stupefied that it would have been easy to enter and rob them of their arms!

One summer he conceived the audacious plan of viewing from a safe hiding-place the whole Imperial Family as it embarked on the barges for the beautiful lakes in the Hills. Every one in the neighbourhood was talking about it: as usual the great ones would leave the city in the sixth month when the great heat had commenced. On such occasions every soul of the common herd was shut indoors to permit the cortège to pass in perfect seclusion. Blue cloth screens were hung along the roadway, and although many declared that by putting their eyes to cracks in their windows they had caught glimpses of the magnificent sedan-chairs and the hosts of retainers, not one of them had ever looked on the face of the great emperor or the great empress.

By dint of watching closely, Wang the Ninth was able to judge when the fateful hour was fast approaching; for the barges were being beautifully polished and were taken out for exercise precisely as if they had been living things. It was no longer safe even to go near them; the guards had become suddenly diligent and would not tolerate the slightest deviation from the fixed rules.

By entering into conversation with them and by running errands for some of them, he at length discovered precisely when the great event was expected. The guards told him grumblingly that they would have to stay up all night prior to the arrival of the cortège, to prevent any mishap. For days he watched very carefully and one evening his vigilance was rewarded. Not only were the guards busy with the boats; but expert watermen had arrived who were engaged in testing everything and who continually disputed regarding the division of money which was later to be distributed. Unless a change of plans was made at the last moment in two days' time the Court would come out of the city. That was what he now heard.

During these two days the boy was in a fever of excitement. He had his plan all complete but he was not sure that he would be able to execute it. On the fateful morn he rose long before dawn and softly unlatching the door stole out as silently as a cat.

There was no moon, and the intense darkness disconcerted him. In the distance, along the highway, he could hear the men of the militia patrol softly singing to themselves to keep away spirits. It seemed to him that there were many more than usual: certainly they were moving about in a way which was not customary with them. Big lanterns showed the headquarters of each post.

Hugging the line of houses he rapidly got beyond the suburb. Then, using shortcuts which he knew as well as any of the wine-smugglers, he finally reached the banks of the Imperial Canal. He was about a half-a-mile from where the barges lay moored against the stone-faced embarkment.

Lights were moving about on them and he hugged himself for joy. There was no doubt that the start would soon be made. Still the most difficult part of the business remained to be done: he had to conceal himself in the most complete manner conceivable.

He waited patiently, gnawing at a piece of stale flour-cake he had carried with him, and glancing repeatedly towards the East for the first glimmer of dawn. Like every Chinese peasant he could locate the points of the compass even in the dark, and he never lost his sense of direction.

Presenty there was a little light—not much, but enough to mark clearly the dim outlines of the trees. He found the one he wanted. Ten feet from the water was a half-rotted tree trunk with a hole big enough for his head. He gathered some of the reeds and rank grass and put them in a handy pile near by. Then he dug up a clot of earth with a plant growing in it, and rounded it off so that he could clap it right on his head. Having completed these preparations he rehearsed his part, thrusting his head through the hole in the tree-trunk and putting the plant and the clot of earth on his head and the reeds on his body so that there should be no mistake. He was absolutely satisfied that if he lay stone-still and peeped through with half-shut eyes not a soul could possibly discover him, even a few yards away.

Dawn had now come and round the barges he could see a growing bustle. Square marquees of blue cloth had risen like mushrooms, and horsemen were continually arriving. A cavalry patrol unexpectedly galloped down the roadway behind him and forced him to conceal himself like a frightened frog in his rotted tree. With his eyes greedily drinking in every detail, he lay and watched. Twice he was disappointed in his hopes; for twice there had been a mighty bustle but nothing had come of it. But at last when the sun was already high, a great slow procession reached the marquees; and after a long pause one barge commenced moving, then a second, then many smaller boats.

Along the road came cavalry. Now the barges, steadily rowed, began floating towards him rhythmically, cleaving their way through the lotuses and the weeds which hung like shagreen on the glassy surface.

He drank it all in with awe-struck eyes, his vast curiosity crushing down his fears.

On each barge were numbers of men in red tasselled hats and long official robes, standing motionless. These were the court eunuchs, he was sure. Nearer and nearer floated the barges slowly, rhythmically. Now he saw in through the pale blue silk curtains of the first glasshouse. There was a lonely figure inside. It must be the emperor. It was impossible to see clearly. But behind, in the second barge, he saw quite distinctly an imperious elderly lady and many young ladies in beautiful silks. That was the old Buddha—the Empress Mother. He had seen her—he had seen her.

Slowly, very slowly, like a mirage, the scene faded. He lay entranced, not daring to move. The blue marquees had been struck and the common people were beginning to pass freely and still he did not move. That was the Lao Fo—the old Buddha, the mighty Empress mother!

When he at last went home, with the mud of the river-bank clinging to him, he told his father in a matter of fact way that he had fallen into a pond, while looking for something he had lost.

CHAPTER VII

Soon after this his father began using him to carry his rudely fashioned iron-ware into the city, where it was handed over to middlemen who scrutinized every place with the eyes of hawks and who paid a mere pittance for this labour of sweat and tears. The boy, however, cared nothing for the business details, although he mechanically cursed the rapacity of the city-bred as his father did. He was conscious, however, that the middlemen, in their long respectable blue coats, were an essential element in the system which held them up. They represented credit. When it was known that he and his father were working on a job of so many hundred iron-nails, or so many flanges, the neighbourhood gave them credit for the amount they would earn, and they could eat in peace. Each time he carried a heavily-laden hemp sack with a completed order to the middlemen, his father would partially settle their local debts. Sometimes on the big settlement-days (which came three times a year) there would be trouble and blows because their accounts were in arrears. Then the boy would avoid every one and sit apart hanging his head, for he vaguely knew that his father's respectability was not what it should be.

What enchanted him in the city was the freedom and bustle. Although his errands were within easy reach of the city gate, he so contrived it that he went far afield, running all the way home so as to have ample time to loaf and stare. For a long while the glamour of mingling with the crowds and gazing into the handsome shops, and watching craftsmen at work was enough to keep him interested. He became familiar with the wealth of a city that was mighty in those days because it drained the provinces and because everybody was provided against want. There were princes and princesses abroad accompanied by handsome bands of retainers, who drove the common people off the driving-road as if they were mere carrion crows. He liked the insolence of their manners which was in keeping with his conception of the rules of a nation; and very often he ran alongside a great red-wheeled princely cart to show his esteem—until he was driven off with a crack of the whip. Now that he had seen with his own eyes the emperor and the empress mother, he found it only just and reasonable that those who were of the blood royal should act as though the world were their property. That was how he liked it: at least there should be some who could do as they liked and to whom riches meant nothing at all.

One day a demon possessed him to go to a Temple Fair which was held every tenth day of the month and which attracted great multitudes of people. He had always wanted to go but his father had refused to give him money. Now he had the opportunity. In the noise and excitement of that closely-packed throng he lost his head, and after a short mental struggle began coolly spending the coins he had received in payment for his father's work. He tasted sweetmeats which brought tears of joy to his eyes, and he bought clever toys of bamboo and coloured paper which enchanted him. The little stock of copper cash was half-spent before he realized what he had done, and, at length, stricken with alarm, he walked home slowly and hesitatingly.

His father was sitting at the door of his hut, smoking and waiting for him after his wont. Directly he saw him his father cursed him for being so slow. The boy frowned hard as he approached; yet in spite of his fear he dealt with the matter with his curious bluntness and directness. Seating himself on his heels he counted out what was left of the money and then heavily sighed.

"I have spent more than half," he announced with grim resolution. "I wandered to the Fair, and because there were many things to buy and others had money to spend I spent too."

His father rose furiously, with a clumsy threatening gesture.

"Whose money was it you carried?" he asked. "Whose money, I say?"

"Yours," answered his son sullenly because he was offended now. "But I have given you the reason and I will repay in due course from what I earn."

"Come here," commanded the father, sweeping all his excuses aside.

The boy hesitated. His father picked up a heavy tool. The boy was caught between a feeling of filial duty which was intense and deep among the people and a new feeling of independence.

"You would strike me with that?" he asked, frowning hard.

"Come here," shouted his father again, and that shout decided him.

"No," he said, folding his arms. "I shall not come."

"Little son of a toad," shouted the infuriated man, rushing at him. "I will teach you, I will teach you."

He swung up the heavy tool, but the boy dived with amazing dexterity, and then ran backwards. Again and again the father aimed blows that would have murdered him, but always missed. Then the growing crowd that had gathered flung themselves in between the two and held the infuriated man shouting in their arms. The father's hysteria mounted higher and higher: the pent-up wrong of ten years ago surged out from his mouth.

"Son of a harlot, come here, that I may slay you," he shrieked at last, wrestling like a maniac. At that the boy turned to a deathly hue,—under his bronzed face.

"Enough," he cried thickly, "I came here from afar with you and now I go again. Never shall I return."

He turned with a clumsy dramatic gesture; looked round once to see that he was not followed, and then running quickly towards the city gate was lost in the throng.

The crowd released the father. All talked volubly all the time. This was a business which must be amicably settled. But the father never answered. He made a hesitating step or two like a drunken man, then reeled to the door of his hut which he opened and slammed behind him.

The wondering crowd, consumed with curiosity, only slowly dispersed. This outbreak was of the stuff that made up their daily lives. It was in the air, always lurking half-hidden behind the blue-cotton exterior of their monotonous existence, coming in sudden storms. Swift, well-recognized and very often fatal to the weak, but nevertheless accepted as something which comes directly from Heaven.

CHAPTER VIII

For many days no one in the neighbourhood saw or heard of the boy; he had disappeared as utterly as if the ground had swallowed him up. The neighbourhood gossiped about the incident as they loitered about in the evening watching the father sitting motionless and silent at his door. And in the Eastern way the tale grew until it was averred that the father had tried to slay his son with his huge smith's hammer and that he was grimly waiting for the truant's return to carry out his threat. It was said that the boy had fled back to the village whence he had originally come years before in that inconsequential way on a creaking wheelbarrow, and that never would he be seen again.

"Perhaps he has killed himself," suggested the women, always willing to believe the worst. But the men shook their heads, firm in the belief that in this case flight to the ancestral village had been sufficient redress.

Yet could they have only known it, Wang the Ninth was not far away—in fact, less than two miles as the crow flies. He had gone at his fast jog-trot not in through the city gate as they had all supposed (for that was only a feint), but round the city along those desolate outer stretches which recall the sandy deserts of High Asia. On and on he had gone until at last he had come upon a group of humble dwellings made of reeds and mud and placed strategically just where the mighty stone girdle of the capital sweeps round in a giant curve to form the northern face of the rectangle. There he had slowed down his running to a walk; and, cautiously glancing around to see that he was not observed, he had at length walked into the biggest house as bold as brass and announced most casually: "I have come for work."

The men gathered there on the brick k'ang had laughed at him at first; for who had ever heard of entrusting the smuggling of wine to a thirteen-year old boy? For this was their peculiar business: smuggling wine into the city so as to avoid the city-dues. It was not majestic or even very dangerous work, but it required a certain tenacity—and great climbing powers. For it was over the wall of the city that they practised their evasion, carrying to the wine-taverns the yellow wine of the country in leather bottles which were packed on their backs much as a soldier carries his knapsack. Often had Wang the Ninth observed them as they ran crouching to the city wall. He had made inquiries and thoroughly informed himself. So now, in answer to their rough gibes, he said:

"It is true I have never attempted this business, but I have carried concealed bottles very often and I know many tricks. Often have I heard how you climb the wall here at dawn and dusk. I, too, would engage in this enterprise."

Thus had he spoken. Then when they cursed him for his effrontery he had shrugged his shoulders. Presently because he was so persistent they had relented, and declared that if he wanted to risk it, they would try him.

"But would you not show fear?" inquired one in a last doubt.

"Fear!" he retorted. "Who speaks of fear! Give me a day to learn correctly, and I will walk up the wall as a man goes up a rope."

His assurance had completely won the day, as it always does in every affair in life. He was fed and went to sleep on the brick k'ang under the coat of the man who had first spoken in his favour; and on the morrow at grey dawn he went out with three men bearing leather bottles and followed them up the angle of the city wall as easily as if it had been a tree.

"It is nothing," he remarked scornfully as they crouched together on the top of the great rampart to make sure that no guards were about: for the men in the guard-house occasionally made a raid to justify their existence. He spoke thus because he was elated by the giddy sensation of the climb, and he boasted when he should have thanked the generosity of Heaven.

"Wait for the descent," chorussed the others. "That is not so easy even for us who have done it so often. Perhaps you will know fear."

They darted across the broad brick platform to the inner parapet, crouching low as they ran, for there was a guard-house a few hundreds yards away. Without a word the first man went over, then the second, then the third, each making the dizzy descent slowly, cautiously, their backs to the wall at the angle where the buttress juts out squarely—walking down sedately like human flies—which is a trick which may be occasionally seen even to this day, and is possible because of the innumerable crevices which time and water-erosion have worked into the brickwork.

The boy watched them from top, and memorized as well as he could every step, as he studied all the cracks and interstices in the mammoth defence. But when his turn came he found that his stretch was smaller than that of a full-grown man and that the strain was great both on arms and legs. Half-way down he became a little tired and a little afraid. But with iron resolution he conquered the shaking of his knees and the faintness in his heart; and at length won the battle and jumped the last six feet, falling and lying on the ground panting whilst his leather bottles rolled near him.

"It is nothing," he remarked, as his breath returned. "If I were full-grown I could do it with my eyes blindfolded in less than a week. It is nothing and less dangerous than a swaying tree-top."

"This boy has too much courage," said one man morosely. "We have done ill to take him. This courage will lead to rashness. Who knows where it will lead!"

So had spoken the representative of a society so constituted that its safety is held endangered by any one who displays contempt for the all-pervading caution. Wang the Ninth did not know about these things, and certainly would not have cared if he had. He was just a small human animal, amazingly self-reliant and amazingly resourceful. His pride had been deeply hurt by his father's public insult of him. There was consequently a mass of sullen rage deep down in his heart—a mass as solid and as heavy as a cannon-ball. For of all things that you may say, even in the sharpest disputes, there is one which must be sedulously avoided. Between father and son this rule is iron. The father had broken the rule and so it was better for the son to carry leather bottles of wine up the city wall than to remain at his side. Beyond this the boy did not reason much although he medidated endlessly as he worked at his new trade. Sometimes the smugglers were detected by the guards and then there was a confused sauve-qui-peut to the sound of a few shots that made a great deal of noise but were comparatively harmless. Once, however, one of his mates lost courage and fell a considerable distance, breaking some bones and stopping the whole enterprise for days; for the smugglers were at bottom a miserable lot who had lost all real courage through years of stealth.

One day something prompted him to give them the slip, and very calmly he marched down the outer street of the suburb which led to his father's hut watching narrowly to see how his return was taken.

His acquaintances greeted him with cries of astonishment. "Here is Wang the Ninth back again!" they exclaimed, crowding round him. "See, he has a red girdle round his waist and new clothing on his back."

But he shook them off and ran on when they attempted to cross-question him; for he was of a loyal nature and moreover had no intention of allowing the world to know what a nefarious occupation he had been engaged in.

Near his home some of his former play-mates, still secretly admiring his independent attitude and a certain roughness he had sedulously cultivated, said to him in discreet voices:

"You ought to have come sooner. Your father has been sick these many days. Had it not been for the neighbours he would have fared ill indeed. Money and food are lacking."

Now he hastened on. His bravado had vanished and there was gloom in his heart. In some trepidation he opened the door of his father's hut and walked in, watched from the street by all his youthful friends.

Inside, stretched on the rude bed of boards, lay his father, quite motionless and covered in a sheep-skin coat, although the weather was warm.

"I have returned," said the son, coming up to him and speaking in his quick city vernacular which was so unlike his father's slow uncouth country speech. "How has this happened?" he added, bending down now. The resentment within him had faded, for was this not his father?

The sick man only groaned for reply, fixing on him glassy eyes.

"How is it?" repeated the youth in the query which every one in the country uses a dozen times a day, and feeling at a loss what to do. He had never before been confronted with the phenomenon of physical collapse. It left him awkward and chagrined.

"It is fever," mumbled the father at length sighing heavily. "If there were money for medicine it might be better. But the neighbours have given me freely and I cannot borrow more."

"I will attend to it," said the stripling, and with that he marched out again and down the street to a shop with a gaudy gilt front and a massive counter covered with blue cloth.

"Medicine for fever," he said, abruptly putting down a piece of silver, and leaning against the counter to see that full weight was given him. Presently he received twenty-four little packets done up in rough brown paper which were guaranteed to be the very best of the herbalist's art. With these in his hand he marched back and settled down to the task of tending his sick parent. He displayed the same phlegm he had shown in the smuggling of wine. Three times a day he drew water from the common well and lit the fire and boiled congee, and bought things as if he had been trained to housework all his life; for this curious nation is like that—all can settle to any task with patience and ease. But his father instead of getting better, became worse. Sometimes for many hours he lay without speaking or moving, and the boy frowning deeply, became gloomy and very silent.

"It is a bad business," he said to the neighbours when they met him on the street. "He makes no progress."

One night he was awakened from a dead sleep by the man's cries and the thrusting movements of his arms. He sprang up and lit the tallow candle in great alarm. His father was sitting up catching at his throat and gasping for breath, a hideous sight, with his forehead so long unshaven and his queue so unkempt. The boy tried to give him water but the bowl fell from the palsied hand. He picked it up and supported the sufferer but with a sudden twist the man turned over and died.

Wang the Ninth, in the presence of death, cried aloud like a frightened animal and then ran to the door, shouting that his father was dead. He had never seen death come before—it came to him as an injustice rather than a blow. He wished others to measure it as he measured it: wished them to realize the drama. But the neighbours were sunk in sleep and when he beat on their doors he only heard them stir and mutter that the fire-devils which prowl at night were around. Nothing would induce them to open although they must have plainly heard the boy's voice.

So quaking with fear he crept back at last and sat with his head on his knees and his teeth chattering looking at the recumbent motionless figure and waiting for dawn.

When daylight came he went out and the neighbours came willingly enough then, in a never-ending stream to stare and make comments. He mourned loudly, beating himself on the breast and looking very miserable, death being an important and ceremonious event and being so considered by all. As there were no relatives, the headman of the locality came and made a rude inventory, and then reported the case to the coffin-guild who prepared a suitable coffin and sent two men with lime to pack the corpse. All the children of the neighbourhood stood in a crowd together at the door, watching and trying to see every movement, for a burial is like a marriage and never fails to awaken interest, the one being the ending of life, just as the other is its procreation.

For a day or so things remained like that with the coffin in the hut. Then when everything was in order, they dressed him in coarse white mourner's cloth and placed a cap of the same material on his head, and the coffin was lifted up by four men on carrier's poles; and preceded by a fellow blacksmith, who carried paper money to be burnt in imitation shoes of silver (such as the dead man had never dreamed of in his life) and followed by the mourning boy, the coffin was carried to the temple of the locality, pending formal disposal.

CHAPTER IX

This humble affair settled, the elders of neighbourhood gathered to decide what should become of the boy and how the debt which had been incurred for the burial and the sickness should be met. The amount realized by the few effects left was barely sufficient to pay one half, and it was necessary by some means to find security for the balance. The boy was the last unliquidated asset.

He had been given shelter in a house near by; and when he heard that they were debating the question of apprenticing him to a big foundry just inside the city gate so that his work might liquidate the debt, he became alarmed.

After much silent cogitation he felt his belt, and finding a coin or two still left, he decided to have his destiny settled once and for all. Slipping quietly down the street, he came to a grave old man seated at a table by the roadside who cast horoscopes.

Without a second's hesitation he placed his money on the table; and sat down obediently on the bare wooden bench to learn his fate.

Every Chinese is possessed of eight characters—four of the Ten Heavenly Stems and four of the Twelve Earthly Branches; and it is by means of these, combined with the Five Elements, that the future may be known. By indicating the year, month, date and hour of birth, which are taught to children at a very early age, the group of eight characters is assembled: then there remains the question of discovering which of the Five Elements, that is metal, wood, water, fire or earth, is to dominate the group and how the interpretation is to be read. The most skilled use the Book of Changes, which was in common use some thirty centuries ago, and by this method see clearly into some scores of years. But there are common fellows who work as well on a simpler system.

Wang the Ninth believed implicitly in all this as a European child believes in the Biblical story of Creation. The truth of it was so immanent that it was a mere manifestation of scholarship to ascertain the precise facts. So he settled himself on the hard wooden bench all attention while the old man peered at him over his spectacles, and arranged the little painted squares with their distinctive characters as he replied to the questions. Presently he had all the data complete—save for the determination of the element which would control him. When he learnt that he was a blacksmith's son he put all the elements aside save metal and fire; with these two in his fingers he consulted his books.

"You were born by fire," he said at last. "That is quite clear to me from the insistence with which your year indicative is repeated under the fire-element. By fire you will live and be tested. Wait till I combine: then we may see how the future grows."

With that he swept the fire-character into the heap of Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches: he shuffled the lot slowly backwards and forwards under his hands as a priest performs a rite. Then he took three ancient coins and shook them in a goblet: three times he repeated the process so that he should acquire the necessary guidance. He noted swiftly with the aid of his brush their import on a piece of red paper, and muttered to himself at the insistence with which the original indications were repeated.

Wang the Ninth sat stone-still watching every movement. A soldier with a bundle of clothing on his shoulder had stopped in idle curiosity: there was another wayfarer or two as well. All these people were silent in the presence of learning; for each one of them at the appointed season would consult such a man regarding marriage or distant journeys or the settling of any important business.

Now the old man stopped his shuffling motion abruptly, aligned the characters, and drank in their meaning as a scholar does a clear script. The onlookers crowded forward so as not to miss a word.

"Born by fire," he began, "you are in opposition to water—yet are you attracted by it. Everything from water must influence you. By water, rivers and oceans are meant: dominated will you be by something from over the sea which will shape your life and violate your ancestry."

He consulted a book.

"Yet fire will return to you. By fire will you be tested. See here is it written—strange men shall lift you up and great perils shall you face but you will not flinch. Stormy will be your life, but finally successful. Violent death will approach you but you will survive. Your destiny is with unaccustomed things which will come upon you before you are yet a man and drag you far away. So is it written. I would scan your features."

The boy rose and put his strong ugly face close to the learned one who now murmured:

"Confirmatory signs are evident in the features. The mouth, colour, nose, ears are good, but there is lacking the proper heaviness of eyebrow. Guard against being turned from your purpose, for there is weakness in your eyebrows. Now the hands?"

The boy held out his hands but the old man did not consult the palms: he was interested only in the shape.

"The fire-test," he murmured, "everywhere the fire-test. In four places is the character written as clearly as with the brush. Go, I have told you all."

"But the year of the test, may I not learn the year?"

The old man muttered to himself.

"Yes," he said, "that is also marked. But let me confirm."

Again he shook the three little cash arranging a character at each throw.

"There it is written for you," he remarked, "by the cylic sign. Keng-tzu-nien—the twenty-sixth year of the Emperor. This year is the twenty-fourth. In two years your test will come."

The boy walked away slowly—powerfully impressed by what had been told him. He left unanswered a taunting remark of the soldier with the bundle. He was absorbed by the prospect held out to him. It was his manifest destiny to become associated with foreigners in some way. The mere fact that this coincided with the plan he had already dimly formed so impressed him that a sort of timidity possessed him.

He stopped by the banks of the Imperial Canal, near the scenes of his youthful escapades with the Imperial barges, and threw stones idly at some ducks in the water which sought shelter with a loud quacking. But amusements which formerly used to delight him had lost their power. He ate his evening meal in silence, not telling any one what he had done and he went to sleep in the same uncommunicative mood. He was awake at dawn and yawning greatly, he idled about waiting for the first meal so that he could at least make his escape on a full stomach.

By noon not only had he eaten, but everybody was engaged or away. So very quietly he rolled up his strip of bedding, thrust such spare clothing as he had inside, and got out of the window with the speed and stealth of a cat. Then with his head down he ran by a circuitous route through the fields, not to his own city gate, where he was so well-known, but due south to the next gate where he was a total stranger. Through this one he entered the city and rapidly made his way to the foreign quarter where he had never been.

The afternoon sun was flooding the streets with golden light when he passed the first foreigner's door. There was strange writing on the door, resembling the Arabic on the houses of rich Mohammedans, he thought to himself. He slowed down and began dawdling, hoping that he would receive some guidance. At last he addressed himself to a doorkeeper—but the man hardly listened to him. Then he saw a groom with some foreign horses, and he loitered up to him and asked him if he knew a foreigner with a big red beard. This man laughed and said that many had red beards and that as he did not know the name he could not say. The boy being tired, sat down on his bundle, and watched every foreigner who passed. Ten or twelve did he see in the course of an hour but none had red beards and all paid no more attention to him than had he been a stone on the roadway. Perhaps the man with the red beard had gone away. As this thought occurred to him he became sorrowful. Then fatalism possessed him and he knew that he would meet him; and presently, oddly comforted, he had an inspiration. Now he went to the nearest foreign gateway, and accosting a man there asked:

"Is there no place where I can most easily see all the foreigners?"

To his delight the man answered—there was a guild-house where they played daily with balls and otherwise amused themselves.

Rapidly he made his way to the spot indicated, and took his stand.

Dusk was coming and it was hard to see. Carts and ponies were collected near this entrance and the carters and grooms sat and talked together. Wang the Ninth, very hungry, now tightened his belt and stiffened his purpose.

Time flowed by as he watched by the oil-lamp. Foreigners came in and went out, sometimes singly, sometimes in pairs. There were not as many as he had expected—in fact there were few. But presently his heart leaped and he ran forward calling. Here was the red-bearded man walking by himself with a big stick in his hand.

"I have come for employment ta lao-yeh (your Honour)," he babbled, speech pouring from his mouth like water from a tap. "Many miles have I walked without food to seek you and to find what I may. If you will give me favour, I will serve diligently."

The red-bearded man had paused amused.

"Where do you come from?" he asked in the colloquial.

"From the west city gate," said the boy. "Once I met in years gone by Your Honour. You were riding. By you was a lady. I was small and in the dust. I ran and crouched away, for never had I seen a foreigner before. So did I remain with my head bowed. Then as you passed you laughed and spoke in your language to the lady and she laughed even as your excellency had done. There was a great flash. I foolishly thought it was your magic to destroy me; but you had thrown a silver dollar to me and it had rolled to where I lay. I picked it up and to all in the neighbourhood is the story known. Since early childhood have I remembered. Now that I am without father or mother or other support I come for employment from your Honour."

The big red-bearded man had listened without a word. Could any one have looked close into his eyes they would have seen there a certain moisture. Twice he looked down at the boy and twice away. Then he said abruptly:

"I can remember, too. The years are not so many. Follow me. Employment shall be found."

He marched straight down the street until he came to the gateway guarded by the self-same gatekeeper who had so angrily repudiated any knowledge of him. The gateway, now open and lighted offered a warm welcome; and Wang the Ninth, safe in the knowledge that he was adequately protected, followed his patron in with a contemptuous smile, whilst his erstwhile oppressor shut the gate behind them and then stood watching them motionless. Down the broad walk the red-bearded man led the boy never saying a word until he reached the door of his house.

"Wait here," he remarked briefly as he entered.

The boy, left alone in the dim light, was not in the least embarrassed by his surroundings. He examined the broad verandah and the flowering bushes in the ample compound with appreciation in his eyes.

"This is good," he said to himself. "Here is one who is obviously wealthy. No matter what my task may be, I shall never lack anything year in and year out."

As these thoughts occurred to him exultation coursed through his body. This was more wonderful than anything he had expected. Cautiously he approached the front-door and peered in through the glass; the interior was full of all sorts of other valuables such as he had never seen before.

His mouth watered, and his eyes remained round with astonishment.

"This is beyond reckoning," he murmured to himself approvingly. "Each thing has its fixed value and added together they make a great sum. It is quite evident that if many are poor some are rich."

He was still engaged in cogitating the matter when the voice of the red-bearded man sounded behind him. He turned with a start and saw that he was approaching with servant who was listening to him respectfully.

"Come here," said the master. "What is your name?"

"Wang old number nine, your Honour," answered the boy, using his common appellation in the manner of the common people.

At that both master and man laughed.

"But your full name?" inquired the former.

The boy stammered:

"My full name? From the moment I was carried to the city always have I been called Wang the Ninth, being the eighth child of my father's family. Chih Liang is my personal appellation, though never used. But it is as you wish."

Once again master and man smiled. There was a directness in this talk which was as the soul of democracy.

"And what have you done in the way of work?" asked his patron once again.

The boy hung his head and fidgetted with his hands.

"I have run wild," he confessed. "Sometimes I assisted my father although without regularity. Sometimes I did other work."

"What work?"

He hesitated. Then, though embarrassed not a little, he announced frankly:

"I smuggled wine."

"You smuggled wine! How and when?"

The boy made a rough gesture with his hand, as if explanation were superfluous.

"At dawn I climbed the city wall with others, carrying country wine which had paid no taxes into the city. For many months it went well, but in the end I abandoned it, although there was a daily profit."

The red-bearded man was pulling his beard and observing him much amused.

"A smuggler's apprentice," he exclaimed. "Well, well. I am doing evil to take you. But is it not true that my gatekeeper was once a robber? Tell me, Shih," he continued, turning to his man.

"It is true," answered the groom, who hated the gatekeeper because he was a Mohammedan and had his own customs and was moreover in secret league with all the horse-dealers, who were Muslims, thereby taking from his profit in all buying and selling. "It is known to all."

"So be it," said the master reflectively. "Faithfulness of service is the only important matter." He turned to the boy. "Listen. For one month I shall give you trial in the stables. Food and lodging shall you have. Later the terms of employment will be stated. All depends on what service you render me. Now go."

And with that he left the stripling in the hands of the groom who marched him off to his corner of the compound and assigned him his duties.

Three times a day must he draw water from the well. Twice daily must the horse-courts be swept. It was his business to lead two ponies for their daily exercise. Never must he mount them or else he would be whipped. As for food he showed him the cooking-pots which it was his business to prepare. There was food ready now.

Wang the Ninth, at that invitation, sat on his heels, seized a bowl and chop-sticks, and devoured a meal such as he had seldom eaten. Then, after that, because he had a full belly he talked until he reeled with sleep, retailing to the stable-hands his most exciting adventures. Later, in the unbroken quiet of the horse-courts, he climbed on to the k'ang assigned him and slept a leaden sleep.

CHAPTER X

The soft, regular life into which he had fallen soon affected the boy queerly: he chafed and became openly moody. His simple duties were so easily performed that he had endless time hanging on his hands. Although he belonged to a race with a genius for passivity, this quality covers certain explosive tendencies which require a regular outlet.

In Wang the Ninth was to be found a compendium of all the virtues and vices of an ancient system. Quick, impetuous, warm-hearted and highly intuitive, there was mixed with these things a certain laziness and indifference to everything save appearance and settled customs. Absolutely honest wherever a definite trust was given him, the boy nevertheless hugely enjoyed all kinds of illicit things. It was the fact that he could not indulge his passion for such enterprises that discontented him: here everything was well-ordered and regular—a sleek existence in all truth.

"Ours is a good master," said the stable-hands gratefully on many occasions. "A man could live here a hundred years and never fear for his employment." To which Wang the Ninth would only give a qualified approval.

One day, when he was wandering in the compound, he discovered the existence of a little door artfully masked behind a tree. It was in strict consonance with his principles that he should keep quiet about the matter, particularly as he had been told that he would be whipped if he went where he had no business to be. He pondered over the matter unendingly for lack of anything else to do, and at last the little door aroused in him a veritable passion of curiosity which became an obsession. Sometimes, when he was exercising the ponies by leading them endlessly round the circular cinder-walk, he would stop short and lose himself in speculations until he was aroused by the animals sniffing at his head. Once he was so deep in thought that the head-groom asked him what he was mooning over.

"I am thinking of family-affairs," he replied abruptly, which was equivalent to saying that the matter was beyond public discussion, since no one outside the immediate family circle is qualified to discuss them.

After that he would sing to himself ever so softly as he walked the ponies slowly round the exercising-ground, so that no man might know what was in his mind. But when he was released from his duties, and dusk had fallen, he would scarcely ever fail to saunter round the straggling compound and at last work his way to the little door. Then, after a look to see that he was not observed, quick as lightning he would dart in and test it to see if through carelessness it had been left unlocked. Many times he did the same thing, and as many times was he disappointed. He began to believe that the masked entrance had no significance at all and had come down from days when the property belonged to some one else.

At last, however, he had the inspiration to use the native plan of putting dust in the keyhole to see if the key were used; the very next evening when he came back his quick eyes saw that a key had actually been thrust in and the dust nearly all knocked out. There was a clear mark which was easily recognizable. Three times he tried the experiment, and three times it produced the same result. He was embittered with the knowledge that the door was regularly used but how or why he failed to discover.

One evening he put his arms round the tree which masked the door, kicked off his shoes, and with his amazing climbing-powers, swarmed up as easily and as rapidly as if it had been a ladder. At last he was able to look over the high white wall.

He was rather disappointed.

On the other side there was a neat little courtyard, which was flanked on three sides—north, east, and west—by little buildings, full of latticed windows. In one corner of the court was stretched a clothesline with women's clothes hanging on it. Asleep on the stone-flags was a small dog with a fine coat.

He was so intent drinking in this scene that an exclamation immediately below him nearly made him loosen his grip and fall. With his mouth wide open and his face very red he glanced down. It was a girl.

She made a step or two as if she were going to call some one. But almost at once she changed her mind and exclaimed irately:

"What are you doing up there, ill-educated boy?"

At that he was covered with confusion: the power of speech almost left him. He said lamely enough:

"There was a little bird on this tree hopping about in the branches. I had observed it two or three times before and tonight I determined to catch it, hoping that it was too young to fly and had fallen from the nest above. It was not an easy matter."