You "examine" the matter, and you find that the man never had a brother, that the letter was written by a clansman next door, and that the whole plot was devised to get you to rectify wrongs without arousing in the offender a suspicion that he had been informed against. There is consequently no feud and no vendetta, and after a few strong and forceful words as to what may happen if people do not behave themselves, the household returns to its normal state of order and quietness. In order thoroughly to understand and appreciate the Chinaman, a man must be possessed of large powers of inference, for it is almost certain that what lies apparent in his conduct is not the real thing that he has in view. One day a Chinaman walked into my study in the free and easy way with which people enter each other's houses in this land, with a basket of eggs in his hand. He was a complete stranger to me, but he talked as glibly to me as though he had been well acquainted with me. He told me that he had brought me a present, that the eggs had been laid by his own fowls, and that though they were too small a present to be accepted by one so much higher than he was, he hoped that I should still condescend to take them from him. "But I do not know who you are, and moreover I do not see why you should make me any present at all." "Oh, I merely wished to do myself the honour of meeting with you, for I have heard others speak with great respect of you, and my wife and I thought that a few eggs from my own farm, though not worthy of your acceptance, would be a little token of the respect in which we hold you." In spite of all his professions of devotion and esteem for myself, I felt convinced that he had some favour to ask of me; but, true to the peculiarity of the Chinese mind, he kept it at first in the background, and after talking with him for about an hour, and after I had hinted that I had an engagement that would compel me to leave him, he began to stammer out that he was in great trouble with some persons in his village, and as he knew that I had great influence, he had come to me to help him out of his difficulty. The secret was now out, and the basket of eggs and the hour's conversation about everything in the world, except the one subject that he had come miles to discuss with me, were but oblique methods of leading up to the one important thought that was filling his mind.