All the above was so familiar to On Yick that possibly he had never given it a thought. To-day, as he sat making bamboo baskets outside his mill, his mind was more occupied with thoughts of the daughter of Tak Wo than with the economical conservancy of streams. The stranger approaching the hills up the rock-strewn gorge was first aware of a continual stamping noise; on a closer approach the air became, in addition to the noise, filled with an all-pervading sweet odour of sandal-wood. Smells are ubiquitous in China, but pleasant smells are often painfully few and far between. This smell, however, emanates directly from On Yick’s abode. The mill-wheel turned by the stream has its axle prolonged on one side, and on this are projecting pieces of wood, which, as the wheel revolves, press down heavy wooden levers which pass through the house wall. At the further end of these levers are heavy balks of timber, which rise and fall into a stone trough in the mud floor. The trough is filled with chips and odd pieces of sandal-wood, the revolving wheel and consequent stamping of the levers breaking it to a fine powder, the smaller particles of which float about in the air, and soon make their presence felt in the nostrils of anyone ascending from the village. The powder when stamped to a sufficient fineness is packed tight in palm leaves, placed in bamboo baskets, and shipped in junks from Tai Kok to the nearest city or fu, where it is employed in the manufacture of “joss-sticks,” so that the fragrant smell may gladden the noses of innumerable greasy idols and further blacken the roofs of countless temples and houses. To-day the middleman of the village had been despatched by On Yick to the house of Tak Wo to make preliminary talk with a view to a marriage being arranged between On Yick, mill-owner, and the daughter of Tak Wo, grass merchant. The meeting of On Yick and the daughter of Tak Wo had been unconventional but not unpremeditated as far as the lady was concerned. It happened in this way. One bright winter morning Hoo, the daughter of Tak, had gone to the hillside to cut grass, and it so happened that On Yick sat outside his door in the sun mending a grass sandal. He sat clad in a pair of blue cotton pantaloons only, his broad, sunburned back exposed to the cheerful warmth of the sun, when Hoo, passing behind him, could not resist the temptation of picking up a frog and throwing it at the handsome young miller. Her aim was true, and the soft, bloated creature struck On Yick just below the shoulder-blades. Quickly turning round he was greeted with a merry laugh and the sight of the bare-footed Hoo scampering away down the hillside.