down to the beach to do their part in the work of sorting.  The large shining blue fishes with bands of blue and rose-red and the yellow ones with spots of red and green they pack in small baskets between rows of green leaves.  The lobsters, always plentiful, they place in baskets having compartments so that they cannot get at each other and mangle their bodies fighting; the oysters they throw into a large common bucket, keeping out the small and inferior ones to carry to their huts to use for food.  Whenever wind and weather permit the men go off on fishing expeditions, and this is the usual scene which attends their home coming.  Then, according to whether the haul has been a good or a poor one, Lihoa, the oldest man in the village, says:  “We will take to the God of the Sea who rides on the Golden Fish a thank offering,” or “The God who rides on the Golden Fish is angry with us; we must pacify him with strips of gold-paper.”  And, regularly on an appointed day, the old man goes up to the cell of the priest carrying the thank- or the sin-offering, as the case may be, to the God with the dreadful goggle eyes who rides a gilded sea-monster.

On the day on which the crosses had been erected on the Cathedral of the Holy Saviour Lihoa and his people had had a miserably small catch of fish.

“My children,” cried Lihoa, “what crime against the God of the Golden Fish have you committed?  So small a haul as this we have not had for a year and a day.  The New Year is at hand.  How can we have our usual celebration with only a sapeck or two in our pockets?”

“How shall we celebrate the New Year?” cried one.  “How shall we appease the God?” wailed others mournfully.

An old Chinaman, whose wrinkled face looked like parchment cried out: 

“Why do you even ask the cause of our bad luck?  Do you not know why it has come upon us?  Were not those white-faced women here again yesterday whose God is the enemy of our God?  Again they have carried off bur babies to the great white house in Hongkong.  Why do not the people kill the superfluous children according to the old custom of the land?  Why let living children get into the hands of these foreign women to be murdered and to have their eyes and hearts stewed up into magic drinks?  The God of the Golden Fish is angry with us.  Not another good haul shall we have; and what is more we shall be swallowed up in the sea, if we allow any more children to be taken to the house of the foreign God.”

“Be still, be still, old Loha,” answered Lihoa.  “You don’t know what you are taking about.  I myself have been to the great white house of the foreign women in Hongkong.  There they do naught but good, and nobody ever hears of your doing anything good from morning till night.  Our children are better taken care of there than here in our poor old huts.  If our women only loved their babes as much as these white-faced women do!  Be still.  Your drivelling talk about stewing