“And are you an officer, dad?” asked Robert.

“Yes,” Benito smiled.  “But my company is one man short.  We’ve only ninety-nine.”

“How’s that?” Robert’s tone was puzzled.

Windham rose.  “I’m saving it,” he answered, “for a wounded hero, who, I rather hope, will volunteer.”

“FATHER!” cried the young man rapturously.

* * * * *

At the Mount Zion Hospital Po Lun fought with death on Tuesday.  The bullet was removed; but though this brought relief, there came an aftermath of fever and destroying weakness.  Alice and her son were at his bedside, but Po Lun did not recognize them.

Mrs. Windham turned a tear-stained face to the physician.  “Can nothing be done?” she pleaded.  “He saved my boy....  Oh, doctor!  You won’t let him die.”

The young physician’s sympathy showed plainly in his eyes.  “I’ve done everything,” he said.  “He’s sinking.  If I knew a way to rouse him there might be a chance.”

As he spoke Francisco Stanley entered, viewed the silent figure on the cot and shook his head.  “Poor Po Lun.  At any rate he’s been a hero in the papers.  I’ve seen to that ...”

“He was delirious all morning ... stretching out his arms and calling ‘Hang Far!  Hang Far!’ Do you know what it means?”

“I do,” Alice answered; “it’s the girl from whom he was separated nearly twenty years ago.”

“Why—­that’s funny,” said Francisco.  “Yesterday a woman by that name was captured by the mission-workers in a raid on Chinatown.  I wonder....  Could it be the same one?”

“Not likely,” the physician answered.  “It’s a common name, I think.  Still—­” he looked at Po Lun.

“Run and get her,” Alice urged.  “It’s a chance.  Go quickly.”

Half an hour passed; an hour, while the watchers waited at the bedside of Po Lun.  Gradually his respiration waned.  Several times the nurse called the physician, thinking death had come.  But a spark still lingered, growing fainter with the minutes till a mist upon a mirror was the only sign that breath remained.

Suddenly there was a rush of feet, a door flung open and Francisco entered, half dragging a Chinese woman by the arm.  She gazed with frantic eyes from Alice to Robert till her glance took in the figure on the bed.  She stared at it curiously, incredulously.  Then she gave a little cry and flung herself toward Po Lun.

What she said no one there present knew.  What strange cabal she invoked is still a mystery.  Be that as it may, eyes which had seemed closed forever, opened.  Lips white, bloodless, breathed a scarce-heard whisper.

“Hang Far!”

“Come,” said Alice.  “Let us leave them together.”

Half an later, in an ante-room, the doctor told them:  “He will live, I think.  It’s very like a miracle....”

* * * * *

At the foot of Brannan street lay the Pacific Mail docks, where the Chinese laborers were landed.  Many thousands of them had been brought there by the steamers from Canton.  They had solved vexed problems as house servants, fruit pickers, tillers of the soil; they had done the rough work in the building of many bridges, the stemming of turbulent streams, the construction of highways.  And while there was work for all, they had caused little trouble.