In the garden there were stone and water glasses, cool shallows, deep drinking palms, awakening birds and amazingly perfect roses, all in a space no larger than a city back-yard. A high wall with broken glass on the top, suffocating China outside, and within the beauty of the pearl and the lotus. The American’s tension allayed somewhat in that beauty. He smoked and picked his way among the stones, sniffing the blooms while the day rose. The voices of his own countrymen outside the wall hardly broke his reverie at first. Presently a peculiar sound held his attention. It was a scraping, as if some wooden object were being raised against the masonry. He halted as a hand came over the top of the glass. A blue-sleeved arm was picking its way to the inner-coping, the woolen sleeve alone between the flesh and the bare glass. The top of the head that appeared presently was rugged and close-cropped. Something about it was strangely familiar, but no more showed for the present. There was a renewed scraping, the head paused in the air, then dropped back again. It startled Romney, but he did not feel called upon to protest. The house seemed adequately protected with man-servants; that fact had been impressed at the street-door. He forgot the incident, and was leaning back against the wall a couple of minutes afterward, when his eyes were called to the corner of the wall at his right. Poised motionless above it was the ominous head again, and that light vulture-blue eye, which found his own like an electric contact, and loosed his jaw. McLean had seen him at the same instant. "Looking for me?" Romney asked. The answer made him think of the boiler-room of the _John Dividend_. There was silence after that. The eye remained fixed upon him. "Come here," added McLean, unwinking. Romney did not move. "Come here," reached him again, hoarsely. There was pull to it. The intensity and concentration of that single utterance had real attraction. Just then the little house-servant appeared, saw the head above the wall, and called for assistance. Other servants came quickly. There was considerable hub-bub behind in the garden as Romney went indoors sick and slowed-up. He found his way back to his room. There hadn’t been a single coin in the clothes that he wore when entering Ti Kung’s house. The contents of these pockets otherwise had been carefully placed on the table in his room, but the clothes were gone. As he stood in his morning-gown reflecting upon the recent affair, his boy came in, bringing a plain black suit of fine quality, suggesting that he try if it would do, and adding apologetically that breakfast was now prepared. The clothing fitted perfectly. Romney realized that they had been made overnight from the dimensions of his old suit, which did not appear again. He wondered if such a thing could be done outside of China.