have killed the callous fiend, when something in his face arrested my arm in mid-air. Could it be? Yes it was. He smiled, the smile broadened, and the melancholy magistrate of Foh Lin broke into peals of merriment. I stared like a fool, and let the sword drop, the situation was unique. I felt almost sorry for what I had done, shocked, it seemed to me, that my idol too had been shattered. “When at last he spoke I listened with bowed head. He, bending a look almost of kindness upon me, addressed me thus— “‘Brother, all my life I have never felt any of the emotions common to men until now, and now I have felt fear. Undoubtedly you have just held my life in your hands. This, the first emotion of my life, felt so strange that I laughed at the idea. I thank you for it, but you must leave me. Should I ever again wish to laugh you might be unable to afford me that pleasure. So it were better for us both that we parted. Fare you well, brother.’ “Thus, Excellencies, I learned the secret of gravity.” “Is that all true, Hong?” “High-born, I would have you ponder this saying of the philosopher—‘A bad liar is a better companion than a deaf mute.’” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE HUNCHBACK’S PIETY ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE HUNCHBACK’S PIETY THE people had long laboured and groaned under the oppressive misrule of Hang Ti, the local magistrate. He was, without doubt, a bad ruler, a man possessed of none of the tenderer feelings of humanity, and one who ground the faces of the poor for his own advancement. Under his mal-administration illegal taxes had been super-imposed on salt, likin barriers established where none should exist, the gaols were crowded with those unfortunates who would not submit to his further extortions, and the whole land cried out for redress. At last the long-suffering poor took into their own hands the only means they possessed of calling the “Son of Heaven’s” attention to their pitiable condition. An insurrection was fomented and quickly blazed into serious rebellion. Villages were sacked, whole districts laid waste, and soon accounts of these doings reached Peking. By swiftest messengers a mandate signed with the “Vermilion Pencil” was conveyed to Hang Ti, ordering him to raise troops forthwith and to crush the rebels, at the same time enjoining all peacefully minded persons to abstain from nervous excitability, but rather to pursue the cultivation of all the virtues, more especially those of thrift, energy, and the study of the classics. Hang Ti’s troops, with their pay long in arrears, no stomach for the fight, and most of them secretly in sympathy with the rebels, were routed at the first engagement, and then the whole province was given up to bloodshed, rapine, and excesses of every description.