While still wet with saki he had left his box and, without knowing what he was doing, had crept among the stamps, because that way was familiar to him. Of course, the glue on the stamps had stuck to him, and the more he struggled to free himself the stickier he became. Then the saki had dried, leaving him all covered by a collection of stamps. Think how he looked! On his legs he had two blue five-cent stamps and three red one-cent each; on his chest there were two red and one yellow. On his arm was another of one cent. He was dreadfully humiliated, and asked me to help him get rid of them. I carefully stripped off those on his back, but he begged me to leave some pieces on rather than scrape them off with my penknife. So from this time Fiam wore a garment as gay as a clown’s. All over him you could recognize little pieces of the face of the Emperor whose likeness is on all Japanese stamps. Fiam was very proud of this costume on account of those fragments of the Imperial face. “With this protection,” he said, “I can accomplish wonders.” “Look out,” I told him. “Your suit has cost me more than twenty cents. What if I should wipe your coat off and put on a Chinese stamp to punish you?” At this he was very angry. And when he was angry he had a queer way of getting even with me. He would say: “All that I told you to write is false, absurd and stupid; it is exactly opposite to the pure and simple truth.” After that he wouldn’t speak for two hours. You can see that he was really dreadfully provoked. [Illustration: Fiam as a Mountain Climber] CHAPTER XII FIAM AS A MOUNTAIN CLIMBER Twice more during that long journey I thought I had lost Fiam. Each time it was on account of that hole in his box through which he crawled out to ramble, and which he couldn’t always find on his way back. One morning in a Chinese village, where I had passed the night, just as I was mounting my horse to ride out to the army I discovered that Fiam had disappeared. I looked everywhere, especially among my postage stamps, but couldn’t find him. In the afternoon as I lay under a tree in the stillness of a deserted field I thought I heard his little voice. “Fiam! Fiam!” I called. I could make out the response distinctly: “Miferino! Miferino!” As I was warm I had taken off my waistcoat to use as a pillow as I lay stretched out. The voice came from that. I fumbled around until I found him shut in between the lining and the cloth. I pulled him out and greeted him effusively. “How did you ever get there?” “I have a habit of going out at night.” “A very bad one.” “Well, what do you expect me to do? I don’t sleep. Last night I went out as usual. Your watch near my house made such an abominable noise, tic, tac! It was like a blacksmith’s forge. Never mind. I went out and took a trip over your clothes.” “Over my clothes?” “Exactly; you had thrown them on the floor, and they made a beautiful landscape.” “A landscape?”