latter placed disdainfully upon the neck of his house-servant. Romney strolled back to the dais ashamed of himself somehow. Minglapo and Nifton Bend joined him a moment later, and rather quietly, as if they appreciated the delicacy of the white man. The emaciated one was brought in by two house-servants. He stood now before the master of the shop, trying to repress the heavy breathing of his exhausted body, and to cover as well as he could the trembling of his muscles from the recent strain. Something of warmth and approval crept into Romney’s heart for the old man, as the pregnant meanings of the moment cleared in his mind. Minglapo dismissed the servants and regarded the trapped one, as Romney imagined, with something of strange kindness. Shutting his eyes, the vast head of the master moved slowly from right to left, then bowed before the American. "Again you are our good genius, Friend Romney.... There appears a need wherever you are—of fast action. I am beginning to believe in what our Doctor says of the thing called American luck." Romney waved his hand deprecatingly, and the General remarked with a smile: "Our young friend feels with very good cause that he has better gifts for us than the force and swiftness of his hands." He turned to Romney, adding: "Do you not see that it was imperative for Young China to find the owner of that badly-hinged knee? Our enemies would have required but little more than a report of our words before that accident. I trust there has been no mistake as to one of these being the lucky knees." He pointed to the house-servant’s thin legs, and presently Romney fell once more into the charm of Minglapo’s voice, though a tension was increasing in his mind in regard to the fate of the captive, his eyes turning often to the hollow-eyed one, as the voice of Minglapo came to his ears as from the deeps of a bubbling well. From none but a fat man with a great chest could such softness and volume issue. The trembling of the servant’s body resulted from exertion, not from fear. His features were sombre and changeless as the east at evening—a face of deep intelligence, but just a wrapping of yellow-pale tissue on the bony block of it, except for the burning quiet of the eyes. The ears were decently cut, the mouth and brow were good. Deference, attention, apprehension—these three were expressed and held in order by a concentration that was no less than mastery. Nifton-Bend had also satisfied himself in study of that face. Minglapo was now questioning his servant in Chinese. ... Fifty years old ... served in this house for two years ... came from the South, from Canton ... papers in his possession to prove this... Nifton Bend leaned forward to straighten the fringe of the cushions at Romney’s knee and whispered: "They all have papers. He is Japanese—as we shall doubtless prove—"