“Sir,” said the breathless and perspiring Quong Ho, “I have unworthily forgotten.” “Did not the Master say: ‘_The true gentleman is never contentious. If a spirit of rivalry is anywhere unavoidable, it is at a shooting-match. Yet even here he courteously salutes his opponents before taking up his position_’—we ought to have shaken hands before starting, but we’ll do it next time—‘_and again when, having lost, he retires to drink the forfeit-cup_’—your forfeit-cup being the loss of the extra hours of tuition. ‘_So that even when competing, he remains a true gentleman._’” “I remember now,” said Quong Ho. “I’m glad you do,” replied Baltazar. “That is the lofty spirit in which we shall continue this exceedingly health-giving science and pastime.” And they continued. The young Chinaman, lithe, hard, physically perfect, little more than half the age of his tutor, devoted himself, with his Chinese assiduity, to the mastery of the fascinating art, and succeeded eventually in giving Baltazar most interesting encounters; he realized that fierce blows planted on venerable features were taken, nay applauded, in the spirit of the Confucian gentleman; he also accepted in the same gentlemanly way the hammering that he invariably received. It was after some months of this training, when he was able to discount merely superior science, that he bowed down before Baltazar not only as before an intellect, but as before a marvellous physical man. There came a truce, however—the following winter—when Baltazar, wise in his elderly generation, foresaw the inevitable supremacy of youth, and ordered new toys from London—foils, masks and fencing jackets. The gloves mouldered in a broken-down potting-shed, and Quong Ho again started, as a tyro, to learn a new athletic accomplishment. Thus in his disciple’s sound body Baltazar contrived to maintain a sound and humble mind. He knew that he was held in deep respect by Quong Ho. But it never occurred to his careless mind that Quong Ho regarded him as a kind of god. He accepted the homage as a matter of course. In these idyllic conditions John Baltazar accounted himself serenely happy. His scholarly solitude was undisturbed by the windy ways of men or the windy ways of moorland nature. The former spent themselves before reaching him; at the latter he snapped his fingers. What to him was the seasons’ difference? So absorbed was he in his work, so circumscribed in his walled enclosure beyond which he seldom set foot, that he barely even noticed the hourly change on the sensitive face of the moor. And season followed season, and the piles of manuscript, exquisitely corrected for the printer, grew in height, and Quong Ho assimilated Higher Mathematics as though it were rice; and everything was for the best in the best of all possible little intellectual worlds. CHAPTER VI