“In such a case,” inquired Fa Fei, caressing his pig-tail persuasively, “how does a wise man act, and by what manner of omens is he influenced in his decision?”

“In such a case,” replied Thang-li, “a very wise man does not act; but maintaining an impassive countenance, he awaits the unrolling of events until he sees what must inevitably take place.  It is thus that his reputation for wisdom is built up.”

“Furthermore,” said Fa Fei hopefully, “the ultimate pronouncement rests with the guarding deities?”

“Unquestionably,” agreed Thang-li.  “Yet, by a venerable custom, the esteem of the maiden’s parents is the detail to which the suitors usually apply themselves with the greatest diligence.”
                                  *

Of the two persons thus referred to by Thang-li, one, Tsin Lung, lived beneath the sign of the Righteous Ink Brush.  By hereditary right Tsin Lung followed the profession of copying out the more difficult Classics in minute characters upon parchments so small that an entire library could be concealed among the folds of a garment, in this painstaking way enabling many persons who might otherwise have failed at the public examination, and been driven to spend an idle and perhaps even dissolute life, to pass with honourable distinction to themselves and widespread credit to his resourceful system.  One gratified candidate, indeed, had compared his triumphal passage through the many grades of the competition to the luxurious ease of being carried in a sedan-chair, and from that time Tsin Lung was jestingly referred to as a “sedan-chair.”

It might reasonably be thought that a person enjoying this enviable position would maintain a loyal pride in the venerable traditions of his house and suffer the requirements of his craft to become the four walls of his ambition.  Alas!  Tsin Lung must certainly have been born under the influence of a very evil planet, for the literary quality of his profession did not entice his imagination at all, and his sole and frequently-expressed desire was to become a pirate.  Nothing but the necessity of obtaining a large sum of money with which to purchase a formidable junk and to procure the services of a band of capable and bloodthirsty outlaws bound him to Ho Chow, unless, perchance, it might be the presence there of Fa Fei after he had once cast his piratical eye upon her overwhelming beauty.

The other of the two persons was Hien, a youth of studious desires and unassuming manner.  His father had been the chief tax-collector of the Chunling mountains, beyond the town, and although the exact nature of the tax and the reason for its extortion had become forgotten in the process of interminable ages, he himself never admitted any doubt of his duty to collect it from all who passed over the mountains, even though the disturbed state of the country made it impossible for him to transmit the proceeds to the capital.  To those who uncharitably extended the envenomed tongue