Almost immediately the telephone rang, and Megan saw one of the wooden figures start toward it with the jerk of something inanimate drawn by a string. His replies were so low spoken she could not even hear his voice. Presently he hung up the receiver and turned. Megan saw that he looked at the seated men in silence and they looked back at him. She thought he was smiling. She had the impression, even from those whose faces were turned from her, that they were all smiling. The one who had answered the telephone left the room and came across the court. He knocked on the door. The orderly opened it and he came in. Megan turned from the window to watch him. He stood by the door; if he had been smiling he was stolid enough now. The General spoke and he answered in short phrases. Mr. Shultz listened intently, his eyes turning from the face of the officer to Captain Li. As he listened he looked down at Captain Li with a smile of contempt, hardy and open. "Well, that's that," he said crushingly. Captain Li did not look up. The General dismissed the officer, and Megan watched for him to cross the court but he did not appear for a moment and when he did the General's orderly followed him. He went back to the lighted room, and at the table where the three others waited for him, he leaned forward to speak to them, resting his hands on the table. They got up and, leaving the tiles in disorder as they lay, one of them suddenly turned off the light. With the blotting out of the lighted room and its figures of men, with the cessation of small sounds of chairs scraping the floor, of telephone calls, a barrier seemed to have suddenly broken down and night poured unrestrictedly around the yamen, flooding the courtyard with darkness and loosing a wind that rustled along the eaves and brushed the branches of the willow trees restlessly against the wall. Megan went back to the table and sat down. A change had occurred inside the room. The three men sat back in their chairs. The pressure that had held them for a time against their wills, molding them into a group, had relaxed and each was once more an individual. Each only waited now, in order to prove it to the others, some opportunity strongly to assert himself. As Megan had partaken slightly in their fear she now experienced some of their relief and an acute reviving interest. "Well," said Mr. Shultz, "so that is over." The General said, "It seems to be. I have just been thinking how fortunate it is that men are divided so unevenly into the simple and the astute. One astute say to a hundred thousand simple. "Yes," said Mr. Shultz, "like the Belgian's patty,--one hare, one horse." "There is no other real division among them," continued the General, "and no other is necessary."