Nor, except indirectly, did he speak of him to the Moon-beam that night, after he had returned to his Pell Street flat that, close to the corner of Mott, faced the gaudy, crimson-bedaubed joss temple--he rather liked its proximity. Not that he believed much in the ancient divinities--the Tsaou Kwo-kiu who sits on a log, the Han Seang-tse who rides upon a fan, the Chang-Ho-laou who stands on a frog, the Ho Seen-koo astride a willow-branch, or any of the other many idols, Buddhist or Taoist. For he was a Chinese, thus frankly, sneeringly irreligious. But he had rare, thaumaturgical moments when his bland-philosophical soul craved a few ounces of hygienic stimulant in the form of incense-powder sending up curling, aromatic smoke, a dully booming gong, a priest’s muttered incantations before the gilt shrine, or a meaningless prayer or two written on scarlet paper and then chewed and swallowed. It was so to-night. “Moon-beam,” he said to his little fat wife, who smiled at his entry as she had smiled at him every day these forty years, ever since she had married him, the earth-bound coolie, in preference to a Manchu who had courted her riotously, swaggeringly, extravagantly, willing to leap all barriers of caste, “I think that after the evening rice I shall go to the temple and burn a couple of Hunshuh incense-sticks before the three gods of happiness--the Fo, the Lo, and the Cho.” He smiled amusedly at the thought. “Perhaps the gods are powerless to help me,” he added with patronizing tolerance, “perhaps they are not. Still--” again he smiled and waved a pudgy hand. The Moon-beam continued setting the table for dinner. “You are in trouble, Great One?” she asked, quite casually, over her shoulder. “Oh--the jackal howls in the distance,” he answered, metaphorically, easing his plump body into a comfortable American rocking-chair. “Yes--” He lit a cigaret. “The jackal howls. Loudly and arrogantly. And yet--will my old buffalo die therefore?” She did not reply. Nor was she worried.