to the most inaccessible parts of the mountains in
search of the stone, unfailing in his skilful care
of the flock, in which he took much honourable pride,
and on all occasions discreet and unassumingly restrained
in his discourse and manner of life. Knowing
this to be his invariable practice, it was with emotions
of an agreeable curiosity that on the seventh day
of the month of Winged Dragons those persons who were
passing from place to place in the city beheld this
young man, Yang Hu, descending the mountain path with
unmistakable signs of profound agitation, and an entire
absence of prudent care. Following him closely
to the inner square of the city, on the continually
expressed plea that they themselves had business in
that quarter, these persons observed Yang Hu take
up a position of unendurable dejection as he gazed
reproachfully at the figure of the all-knowing Buddha
which surmounted the Temple where it was his custom
to sacrifice.
“Alas!” he exclaimed, lifting up his voice,
when it became plain that a large number of people
was assembled awaiting his words, “to what end
does a person strive in this excessively evilly-regulated
district? Or is it that this obscure and ill-destined
one alone is marked out as with a deep white cross
for humiliation and ruin? Father, and Sacred
Temple of Ancestral Virtues, wherein the meanest can
repose their trust, he has none; while now, being more
destitute than the beggar at the gate, the hope of
honourable marriage and a robust family of sons is
more remote than the chance of finding the miracle-working
Crystal Image which marks the last footstep of the
Pure One. Yesterday this person possessed no secret
store of silver or gold, nor had he knowledge of any
special amount of jade hidden among the mountains,
but to his call there responded four score goats, the
most select and majestic to be found in all the Province,
of which, nevertheless, it was his yearly custom to
sacrifice one, as those here can testify, and to offer
another as a duty to the Yamen of Ping Siang, in neither
case opening his eyes widely when the hour for selecting
arrived. Yet in what an unseemly manner is his
respectful piety and courteous loyalty rewarded!
To-day, before this person went forth on his usual
quest, there came those bearing written papers by
which they claimed, on the authority of Ping Siang,
the whole of this person’s flock, as a punishment
and fine for his not contributing without warning
to the Celebration of Kissing the Emperor’s Face—the
very obligation of such a matter being entirely unknown
to him. Nevertheless, those who came drove off
this person’s entire wealth, the desperately
won increase of a life full of great toil and uncomplainingly
endured hardship, leaving him only his cave in the
rocks, which even the most grasping of many-handed
Mandarins cannot remove, his cloak of skins, which
no beggar would gratefully receive, and a bright and
increasing light of deep hate scorching within his
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