The line of unpainted, springless carts, roofed with arched matting, yellow with the fine dust of the highway, moved, squeaking, off among the hills. Following close went the women and the servants. The junk swung deliberately out and off down the river. Doane, declining a cart, walked beside that of his excellency; Rocky Kane, deadly pale, his mouth set firmly, beside Miss Hui Fei. And so, through the peaceful country-side they came to the long brick wall and the heavily timbered gate house by the road, and, pausing there, heard very faintly the soft tinkling of the little bronze bells within. It was late afternoon. The shadows were long; and the evening birds were twittering among the leafy branches just within the wall. CHAPTER XI--THE LANDSCAPE SCROLL OF CHAO MENG-FU |ROCKY KANE, the few hours that followed were to exist in memory as a confused sequence of swift-pressing scenes, all highly colored, vivid; certain of them touched with horror, others passing in a flash of exotic beauty; while the fire of hot, unreasoning young love burned all but unbearably within his breast. He would remember the crowded line of carts in the sunken narrow road, the unruly mules that plunged and entangled their harness; the huddled women; the yellow dust that clung thickly to the bright silks of the mandarins; the confusion about the gate, and the handful of soldiers that came hurrying forward to help in a strange business up there; the trains of other carts that struggled to pass in the narrow way, while tattered muleteers shouted a babel of invective. He would remember the sad face of Miss Hui Fei-drawn back within the shadow of the cart and the faint smiles that came and so quickly went; and the efforts he made, at first, to cheer her with boyishly bright talk of this and that. He would remember how he made his way forward through the press, without recalling what had just been said, or what, precisely, could have been the impulse driving him on; past his excellency--sitting yet in his cart, calmly waiting, while the drabbled mandarins stood respectfully by; and how he found the soldiers carrying oddly limp Bodies into one of the gate houses, hiding them there.