Bill got up against an awful bad combination in China. I won’t tell you where it was, for I don’t want you to find it. Maybe you’ll run across a man named McDougal out there. He was with Bill when they got in trouble. Bill saw a chance to get away in the night, but he stood the crowd off somehow to give McDougal leeway to join him. And this McDougal lit out with never a thought for Bill. There was something wrong with McDougal, as I figure it out. Maybe he was a good man, but here was one time when he fell down on his job. None of us say much about it, Captain Mike, but we all pray we won’t get caught that way. You know what I mean. We’re afraid there may be a weak spot in us that we don’t know is there until we have to face the music. Anyhow, as I gather from Bill, McDougal was a quitter. If I know anything about men, he has wished a hundred times since that he had stayed to take his medicine with Bill. We would a heap sight rather see you come home alive than to go monkeying with the Painted Joss. Nothing much has happened except a dry spell in August and corn and potatoes set back. Hens are laying well. Your friend, J. KENT. Captain O’Shea chuckled and then became thoughtful. Paddy Blake and McDougal. Charley Tong Sin and the wreck of the _Whang Ho_. Wang-Li-Fu and the terrible Chung. Much can happen within the space of a few weeks to a man that will seek the long trail. Presently he took from his leather bill-book several slips of paper which he had received from the Yokohama Specie Bank in exchange for his gold bars and silver “shoes.” After making sundry calculations with a pencil, he said to himself: “The share of Jim Eldridge, alias Bill Maguire, is nine thousand eight hundred and sixty-two dollars and eleven cents, and ’tis here all ship-shape in two drafts on New York. My piece of the loot is the same. But the red-headed sailorman will never be the lad he was, and he should not be worried by the lack of money to live on. And could any money pay for what he went through? ’Tis easy to know what I should do. I will not take a cent of the plunder. My share I will give to Bill, and with his bit of it he will be comfortably fixed.” An expression of boyish satisfaction brightened his resolute features as he added: “A man would be ashamed to take money for such a pleasant vacation as this one has been. Now, I will send a cable message to Bill Maguire and it will cheer him a lot. His account is squared. And I think I have put a crimp in _The Sect of the Fatal Obligation_.” THE END Transcriber’s Notes Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.