They came on, laughing, with a good deal of rough banter, and gathered up the jewels. Tom and another mounted the steps to the body and went through the pockets of his trousers for the jewels that were there and the pistols. As there was no coat they did not look further. And then, merrily, they went back over the marble bridges to the buildings in the grove where were still, perhaps, liquor and women. When the last of their shouts had died out, when laying her head against the fragrant wood she could hear again the musical tinkling of the bronze bells and the pleasant murmuring of the tiny waterfall and the sighing of the leaves, Dixie slipped down to the body, fastidiously avoiding the blood. It was heavy; she exerted all her wiry strength in rolling it partly over. Then, drawing out the curious net of pearls she let the body roll back. Returning to her sheltered seat she spread on her lap the amazing garment; for a garment of some sort it appeared to be. There was even a row of golden clasps set with very large diamonds. At a rough estimate she decided that there were all of three thousand to four thousand perfect pearls in the numerous strings. Turning and twisting it about, she hit on the notion of drawing it about her shoulders and found that it settled there like a cape. It was, indeed, just that--a cape of pearls. She did not know that it was the only garment of its precise sort in the world, that it had passed from one royal person to another until, after the death of the Old Buddha in 1908 it fell into the hands of his excellency, Kang Yu. She took it off; stood erect; pulled out her loosely hanging middy blouse; and twisting the strings into a rope fastened it about her waist, rearranging the blouse over it. The concealment was perfect. She sat again, then, to think out the next step. Returning to the junk was cut of the question. It would be better to get somehow up to the concessions and trust to her wits to explain her presence there. For Tex had been shrewd enough about that. The concessions were a small bit of earth with but one or two possible hotels, full of white folk and fuller of gossip. She had had her little difficulties with the consuls as with the rough-riding American judge who took his itinerant court from port to port announcing firmly that he purposed ridding the East of such “American girls” as she. Dawley Kane would surely be there, and other survivors of the fire.... It all meant picking up a passage down the river at the earliest possible moment; and running grave chances at that. But her great strength lay in her impregnable self-confidence. She feared herself least of all.