“To maintain otherwise would be impious,” admitted his master, “but at the same time there is nothing to indicate that the beneficial deities are not the ones responsible for this apparition.”  With these humane words the kindly-disposed Ten-teh wrapped his outer robe about the man-child and turned to lay him in the empty creel, when to his profound astonishment he saw that it was now filled with fish of the rarest and most unapproachable kinds.

“Footsteps of the dragon!” exclaimed the youth, scrambling back on to the raft hastily; “undoubtedly your acuter angle of looking at the visitation was the inspired one.  Let us abandon the man-child in an unfrequented spot and then proceed to divide the result of the adventure equally among us.”

“An agreed portion shall be allotted,” replied Ten-teh, “but to abandon so miraculously-endowed a being would cover even an outcast with shame.”

“‘Shame fades in the morning; debts remain from day to day,’” replied the youth, the allusion of the proverb being to the difficulty of sustaining life in times so exacting, when men pledged their household goods, their wives, even their ancestral records for a little flour or a jar of oil.  “To the starving the taste of a grain of corn is more satisfying than the thought of a roasted ox, but as many years must pass as this creel now holds fish before the little one can disengage a catch or handle the pole.”

“It is as the Many-Eyed One sees,” replied Ten-teh, with unmoved determination.  “This person has long desired a son, and those who walk into an earthquake while imploring heaven for a sign are unworthy of consideration.  Take this fish and depart until the morrow.  Also, unless you would have the villagers regard you as not only deficient but profane, reveal nothing of this happening to those whom you encounter.”  With these words Ten-teh dismissed him, not greatly disturbed at the thought of whatever he might do; for in no case would any believe a word he spoke, while the greater likelihood tended towards his forgetting everything before he had reached his home.

As Ten-teh approached his own door his wife came forth to meet him.  “Much gladness!” she cried aloud before she saw his burden; “tempered only by a regret that you did not abandon your chase at an earlier hour.  Fear not for the present that the wolf-tusk of famine shall gnaw our repose or that the dreaded wings of the white and scaly one shall hover about our house-top.  Your wealthy cousin, journeying back to the Capital from the land of the spice forests, has been here in your absence, leaving you gifts of fur, silk, carved ivory, oil, wine, nuts and rice and rich foods of many kinds.  He would have stayed to embrace you were it not that his company of bearers awaited him at an arranged spot and he had already been long delayed.”

Then said Ten-teh, well knowing that he had no such desirable relative, but drawn to secrecy by the unnatural course of events:  “The years pass unperceived and all changes but the heart of man; how appeared my cousin, and has he greatly altered under the enervating sun of a barbarian land?”