The Vermilion Pencil: A Romance of China

With thoughtful, tireless touch, the Unknown nursed the Breton through the fever that had fastened upon him the night he had cast aside the wife of Tai Lin and had brutally left her lying unconscious on the floor in the dusk of that evening when she had so trustingly laid upon his bosom and had given over to him her love and her life and her honour. Sleepless, the Unknown had nursed him as he struggled to hurl himself into the river that still flowed coaxingly at his feet. Sleepless he had knelt beside him when he lay in a stupor, his face pallid and covered with a cold sweat; sleepless he had listened to him muttering in slow, indistinct utterance, insistent as the dripping of the Water Clock, “I have sinned; I have sinned; I have sinned.”

The Unknown had roughly driven the other priests from the Breton’s chamber on the day they had brought him from the river’s bank, even after he became convalescent and was moved out into the shadowy cloisters, the Unknown still watched sternly and silently over him, so that during those reluctant days of the Breton’s recovery, neither the priests nor the communicants, continually coming and going, heard this silence broken nor knew the cause of the Breton’s sickness. They glanced compassionately at his fever-worn figure, motionless other than his fingers, which were ever nervously creasing, smoothing, caressing a fold in his robe. They noticed that his eyes looked endlessly somewhere, and that a stony calmness, like a veil, clung to his face. But their glances, as they passed and repassed, were ever as thoughtless as they were momentary. It was not for them to conjecture the struggle waging in the still form before them; that unseen volcanic combat was hidden by illimitable distance.

When the Breton was able to leave the Mission he accompanied the Unknown once more on his visitations through the city. These visits took them to that part of Yingching lying north of the Examination Grounds, and when they returned to the Mission they made a short cut through these ancient tourney grounds where multitudes have, during these thousand years contended and lost and won as Fate has willed. Going out by the South Gate they turn westward into the short Street of the Martial Dragon, at the end of which stands the Tower of the Water Clock, where this time-gnawed clepsydra of Yingching drips, drips, drips, the minutes of unnumbered years.

How often the Breton had come to this comforting tower to dream in the shadows of its imperturbable calm, happier than any in the bottomless pool of millions, that swirled around him, the Unknown did not know. But as he passed the winding stairs, the Breton stopped, looked up, and drew his hand across his eyes.

“Come, my son, we must go on,” said the Unknown, gently taking him by the arm.

The Breton looked dully at him for a moment, then seizing his hand pressed it convulsively to his heart.

“No, no, my father,” he cried, bursting into sobs. “I cannot go.”

So it came about in this manner that each day the Unknown left the Breton at the Stairs of the Water Clock and hastened on his way alone to the Great Peace Gate, and it was never until night that the Breton came silently to his chamber.

Once when they came to the Tower of the Water Clock, they stopped as usual but the Unknown stood for a long time gazing intently, questioningly at the Breton, then suddenly he put his arms around him, pressed him fervently to his heart, kissing him repeatedly on both cheeks, while tears streamed down the seams in his face.

“My son,” he cried brokenly, “my son,” and he wept as only an old man can.

“Yes,” he said finally, his voice again calm, “I leave you, my son, to God.”

He kissed the Breton again and hastened toward the Great Peace Gate.

For some moments the Breton stood by the winding stairs of the Water Tower, then walked hastily south, winding, turning, doubling, twisting through a maze of narrow alleys until he came to the Street of Pearls. Once on this thoroughfare he hastened on until he came near to where the street ended at the granite Gate of Tai Lin’s park. Without hesitation he turned into an open guardhouse recessed on the right of the street and leaning against one of the pillars fixed his gaze upon the gateway, as immovable as the pillar itself—which was of stone.

The hour of dusk was falling. Shopkeepers came out of their stores and looked in vain for a customer. Reluctantly they took in their wares and put up their shutters. The itinerant booths were gotten ready and were being taken home on the backs of their owners.

On the side of the street opposite the guardhouse and nearer the Gateway a fortune-teller stopped suddenly in his packing and beckoned mysteriously to his neighbour, a cook.

“Again!” he whispered hoarsely in the cook’s ear.

“Again? Again? What again? Rice——”

“Did I not prognosticate?”

“Pork——”

“Look! Again he is there!” and the fortune-teller whirled the cook around and, half crouching, pointed cautiously to the guardhouse.

“So he is! So he is!” cried the cook.

“Did I not foretell it? Master cook, did I not prognosticate?”

“Yes, that is a fact,” answered the cook doubtfully.

“Cook,” continued the fortune-teller in mystic-triumphant tones, “I see everything, hear everything, know everything. Now, master cook, let me do you a good turn; it will only cost——”

“But,” suddenly exclaimed the cook, brightening, “he has been there in that fashion toward night-cooking for nearly two full moons.”

“Certainly, certainly, but would he have been there if it had not been for my prognostications?”

“That may be, that may be,” answered the cook, scratching his head.

“Master cook, let me prognosticate you. It will only cost——”

“No,” interrupted the cook abruptly. “But,” he hesitated, “I don’t like that influence every day just at my night-cooking.”

“It is very bad,” interjected the fortune-teller, shaking his head ruefully. “I would not be you for all the cash of Ho.”

“What is it?” demanded the cook hastily. “Tell me, master, tell me.”

The fortune-teller jumped back dramatically and threw up his hands. “I am overwhelmed,” he cried in lofty injured tones, “dumb, speechless, a dying phœnix.”

The cook scratched his head and looked sheepishly at him.

“Master cook,” the fortune-teller continued in the same severe voice, “you pretend to be a merchant, and yet you are unable to distinguish great profits from a fly’s head. Is it not known among honourable merchants that just scales and full measures injure no man? I am pained! Goodbye, master cook.” The fortune-teller began to wrap up his paraphernalia.

The cook scratched his head.

“Master cook, I leave you with a pitying heart—farewell.”

“What have I done? What have I done?” cried the cook, coming hastily to his side.

“What have you done!” repeated the fortune-teller scornfully. “What have you done but throw out the refuse, the burnt scraps, the very swill of your inquisitiveness to lure from me the peculiar gems of my knowledge—my pearly prognostications!”

“But what have I done?” exclaimed the cook perplexedly.

“Can you get rice without planting? Chickens without eggs? Heat without fire? Fire without fuel? Prognostications without incentives?” demanded the fortune-teller haughtily.

“But what threatens me? What threatens me?” cried the cook impatiently.

“Master cook,” said the fortune-teller, solemnly though relentingly, “I should be lenient with you; that you do not understand the incomprehensible is not your fault. You are a cook, I alone am the scholar. Cook, I pity you; to me only is apparent the disaster over-pending. I will aid you.”

“Do, master, do.”

“Before prognosticating, cook, I must have four rice-cakes, cooked well in oil, and two pieces of pork——”

“Too much! master fortune-teller, too much!” cried the cook, backing off in amazement.

“Cook, I salute thee! To-night empty your oil into the street; scatter your flour upon the night-winds—you will need them no more. Farewell, there comes a day when every tumour must be punctured. Listen now to my last prognostication: Do not waste your wife’s cash in mock-money. It will not avail you.” The fortune-teller moved slowly away.

“Master fortune-teller! Master fortune-teller!”

“What is it, unfortunate man?”

“I will give you one rice-cake and one piece of fat pork.”

“Does one grain of planted rice produce as much as four?”

“I am a poor man.”

“Must not the poor avert their fate as well as the rich?”

“I will give you two rice-cakes and one piece of lean pork.”

“You are indeed a poor man,” commented the fortune-teller sadly, “and unfortunate. Yes, my compassion pleads for you. I will prognosticate. Yes, for two cakes, two fat pieces of pork, and a bowl of kale.”

“Too much! Too much!” cried the cook desperately. “I will give you the cakes and the pork, no more! no more!”

For some moments the fortune-teller looked seriously up at the heavens.

“Let it be,” he finally mumbled with compassion, “but mark you, master cook, the depth of my benevolence!”

When the cook had provided him with rice-cakes and two squares of fat pork he squatted down upon his heels and munched contentedly, while the cook crouched by his side and waited. Now and then the fortune-teller would stretch his neck and peer mysteriously through the gathering twilight at the tall figure standing so still beside the stone pillar of the guardhouse, and the cook at the same time stretched his neck and peered fearfully through the shadows.

After the fortune-teller finished his cakes and pork he drew from his paraphernalia a small-bowled pipe. When he had taken a few puffs, he asked in a low voice:

“What do you see, cook?”

“He is still there,” answered the cook in a whisper.

“What else do you see?”

“He stares like a big-eyed owl.”

“What is an owl?”

“A bird of bad omen.”

“What else do you know?”

“That he never turns his round eyes away from the gate of Tai Lin.”

“What is a gateway?”

“It is the coming in and going out.”

“How do you write the characters Yen Wang?”

The cook moved closer to the fortune-teller. “Is it that?” he asked hoarsely.

“Did you not see him when he commenced to come many moons ago?”

“Yes, master, yes.”

“Was he not as stalwart as the young bullock of Heungshan?”

“Yes, master——”

“And now he is like a spectre, a troubled ghost whose Fêng Shui has been ruined.”

“It is true, master, it is true!”

“Have you not noticed,” continued the fortune-teller in tones that made the cook huddle closer to him, “that since he came you have drowsed and drowsed and been careless of your business?”

“It is true! It is true!”

“Have you not noticed that when his fingers twitch, men shun you?”

“Many men have passed me by, master, many have passed me by!”

“Have you not noticed when his bosom heaves out you have a sadness in your chest?”

“Yes, yes.”

“He has the appearance of a Western-sea man!”

“What!”

“A foreign devil. Have you seen his eyes? They are blue!”

“Blue? master, blue?”

“If he should look into your boiling oil, it would go up in flame; if he should look into your flour, it would frisk with weevils; if he should look into your meat, lo! there would be nothing but maggots, and if he should peer into your heart—I tremble.”

The cook crouched closer to him.

“Cook, how is the Idol of Yang Ssü made?”

“By three swings of the axe, master.”

“How is the Idol of Yen Wang made?”

“I know not, I know not.”

“It is carved by tears, cook, as rocks are cut by mountain’s rain. Its visage is of the terriblest sorrow; the height of heaven, the depth of the sea cannot encompass it.”

The fortune-teller leaned closer to the cook and whispered hoarsely in his ear: “He has the face of Yen Wang.”

“I feel that sadness! I feel that sadness!” cried the cook, pulling open the neck of his blouse.

The fortune-teller looked at him pityingly, then up at the darkening sky and remained contemplative for some time.

“Cook,” he said thoughtfully, “there are some things that are known and some things that are not. From the things that are known we learn concerning the things that are not, but this is the task of the wise. Now it is known that heaven is round and the earth square; that the stars are shining characters in the Book of Fate, and eclipses are dragon feasts. Moreover, it is known that when tigers plunge into the sea they become sharks, and sparrows falling into the water are changed into oysters. It is also known to those that are learned that it is the nature of water to run downward; the nature of fire to flame upward; the nature of wood to be either crooked or straight; the nature of metals to be pliable and subject to change. In addition to this, cook, it is known to scholars that there are five elements, five planets, five great mountain ranges on the earth, five seas, five senses, five musical tones, five kinds of coffins, five kinds of torture, five ways to die in, and five times in the last five minutes has the spectre in the guardhouse clenched his hands.

“Now, cook, what is known to us, especially wise, is that the clouds are dragons and the winds tigers; mind is the mother, matter the child. If the mother summons the child, will it dare disobey? Those that, like myself, can expel the spirit of death, must summon the spirits of the five elements, and who would conquer death must obtain the influence of the five planets. When this is done, Ying and Yang can be controlled; winds and clouds are gathered into the palm of the hand; mountains and hills torn up by the roots, while seas and rivers can be made to spring out of the ground.

“But, cook, to save you from Yen Wang, whose image now looks down upon you, who has been in your very presence for nearly two rounded moons, exceeds all of these things in wisdom and difficulty. There is only one thing, and it is by no means easy, even for me, to obtain—a golden elixir! Ordinarily the moon and planets and all the powerful lights in heaven must seven times seven repeat their footsteps; and the four seasons nine times complete their circuit. Then must this elixir be chastened in molten silver and burnt red with molten gold. But, cook, one draught will save you; three draughts will give you ten myriad of ages, and eight draughts will waft you beyond the sphere of sublunary things.”

“Do it, master,” muttered the cook huskily.

“It is well,” responded the fortune-teller solemnly. “And I shall see to it that this shall not cost you more than ten taels sycee——”

The cook sprang tragically to his feet, and forgetful of the image of Yen Wang the wrangling of cash began.

The Breton in the guardhouse awoke from his stupor. Reluctantly, silently, he went away and night came down upon the Street of Pearls.

What to man is the warring of a whole world of nations when his heart and soul wage their more terrible combat within him? What to him are the destruction of Empires and the annihilation of whole kingdoms of men when his own bosom resounds with mutilated cries? So it is that a monarch in his temporal power is subject more to this internal warring and brawling than to the sufferings of millions, and the spiritual pontiff is likewise forgetful of the penitential throngs and waxes gay or melancholy as this combat ebbs or surges tumultuously within him.

This battling between the heart and soul, flesh and spirit, conscience and desire, or what not, is the primæval combat of man. It is Cosmic. And while blood-letting is purely human, this other struggle has something of God in it—hence its terribleness.

For two months such a combat had been going on in the Breton and the terribleness of it had left its traces upon him. He was but the withered semblance of his former self. Feeble and meagre, he appeared to have but little of life left in him. Only when the alluring mind—the heart’s fickle ally—would come to his relief with pleasing, enticing thoughts did he betray any energy or affect interest in the affairs about him. Then he hastened to the guardhouse on the Street of Pearls, where he stood motionless until dusk, his hollow eyes staring through the portals into Tai Lin’s park. There he waited day after day to see those that lived where she lived, as if they could bring away with them some message from her unknown to themselves, but which he could decipher as soon as they came through the gateway.

Such are the strange conceits of hidden love, and such are the stratagems them employ. A familiar odour, sight, or sound are inexhaustible quarries out of which are hewn and polished with exquisite care blocks that go to build up endless palaces and castles of revery, wherein, in due time, are crowded a thousand airy happenings. There the unsubstantial mind brings to broken hearts echoed laughter, false mirrored scenes, and a myriad of fairy fantasies woven out of the unknown.

Down by his crucifix all night, or on the overhanging bank of the river the Breton fought against his heart and its desires, against the love that had come to him unknown and had taken him suddenly body and soul into its keeping, and which even in midst of his appeals to God burned and surged in every vein. So he struggled night after night, little dreaming that the combat was drawing to a close, and was to end—fortunate or otherwise—as each must determine for himself—in a manner that showed him that the hand of God was in it and it was done under His eye.

Dusk had already merged into darkness when the Breton, as usual, entered the cloisters on this night. The faint glimmer of stars that crept through the one high-barred window was lost in the shadows that lay within. He lit a candle, and folding his arms on the table buried his head in them. It was in this manner and at this hour that the dreams of the day began to forsake him. Sometimes his body quivered, and it may have been the trembling of a sob, but it was unuttered. Sometimes he raised his head and with dry, questioning eyes gazed long and intently at the crucifix hanging with its wounded Christ beside his pallet.

Midnight or after a person listening would have heard a smothered moan and might have seen a glimmer of tears in his eyes as they again sought beseechingly the crucifix on the wall. It was then that the day-dreams had utterly vanished, and only the pain of his sin lay hold of him. It was then that he left the table and threw himself down before the Christ in whose compassion sins are forgiven and the memory of them washed away.

So, on this night when he raised his eyes to the crucifix he discovered before him two sealed envelopes. On the larger was written, “Do not open for one year.” He broke the seal of the other and drew out a letter in the handwriting of the Unknown.

As the Breton read the first few lines a look of startled wonder came into his eyes, then pain mingled with anguish. He stopped reading and for some time sat gazing emptily before him into those dim places where truth is sought.

Presently he resumed reading the Unknown’s last words, and varying emotions of amazement and fear shot across his face. He looked wonderingly over to the crucifix as if to ask: “Do you know all this?” But as he continued reading his credulity vanished, and the lines of his lips drew hard and straight. Sometimes his fist involuntarily clenched, a flush burned in his pale, sunken cheeks; sparks of a hidden fire flashed from his blue-black eyes, blazed, died out, then burned with a steadier flame. Sometimes the veins in his forehead and over his temples stood out like whipcords. His breath came in even heavy pulsations.

The letter of the Unknown was drawing to an end. The Breton rose from his chair and bent over against the candle flame, as if with brighter light to fathom out the terror and the truth of those unread pages.

The last sheet fluttered from his hand.

Standing by the table his head gradually sank forward; his eyes closed, and into his face came a stony uncertain tension. Presently, like one awakening, he pressed his hand across his eyes, as if to arouse himself more surely to the scene before him. Then mechanically he gathered up the sheets of the Unknown’s letter and put them back in the envelope—all but the last sheet, which was afterwards found on the floor under the table, and on which were written these enigmatic words:

“My son, I cannot continue this category of sin. Day now breaks and I must be on my way—a way from which there is no returning at all, forever. You will look into what I have written, then—go away.

“What will come of all this I do not know, but these people will not submit forever. Why they have done so this long I do not understand, nor do I know what is going to happen except that in the chronology of such acts comes inevitably the century end of wrong and that awful number ‘Ninety-three.’ I see already the rim of a reign of terror, I hear noises that are the clamour of vengeance, I discover signs in the heavens and it is the judgment of God.

“To-night is the end! What melancholy forebodings this may bring to you, my son, will remain forever unknown to me. But I leave you, as is my duty—that you may grapple with this double-headed dragon that now assails you. Alone you must conquer or alone succumb. In the battles of the heart and soul there can be no allies.

“I have left you in the other envelope certain secrets, which you are not to discover until you have left this place, to return no more.”

The Breton continued standing by the table, staring emptily into those shadows out of which so often come forms real and terrible.

The candle burned low and flickered.

Into the dull eyes of the Breton a faint light was creeping, a light that was not a reflection, but itself a fire such as lurks in that inflammable tinder—a man’s passions.

The candle, like the Breton’s faith, was sputtering, and presently this candle flickered and went out.

Night was ebbing away. Monotonously the watchman passed and repassed, his gong grumbling out the hours of night.

A grey ray stole in from the east; the hum of a new day grew great, and the breaking dawn with its echoes came into the silent room.

The Breton was kneeling before the crucifix that hung near his pallet. Daylight did not arouse him, nor the clamour of day. He was not praying, nor moving, nor dreaming. He was waiting, as men before him and since have waited, for the Christ to lift up his bowed head and speak to him from the pain of the crucifix. The Breton waited, and the solemn melody of chanting voices rose and fell, then—silence.

A sunbeam edged shyly through the window, lingered uncertain and—went away. Someone knocked at his door, but he did not turn from the cross, for he heard no sounds nor knew that it was midday.

Daylight grew dim, and the melancholy shadows of twilight hovered a few moments around his window, then it was again dark and the watchman’s gong measured out the hours of the night.

Once more dawn crept up from under the skirts of night and ushered in a new and memorable day for the Breton priest. He still knelt before the crucifix, but the deep lines of pain had vanished from his face; a calm, gentle serenity rested there, and when at last the sunbeam edged coyly, doubtfully, across the casement, he opened his eyes and they shone with a new, great joy.

When the sunbeam began to go he rose from the crucifix and put the envelopes into his robe. For some moments they lingered, then went away—this sunbeam and the Breton.

Without hesitation the Breton once again entered the Palace of Tai Lin, and went quickly through its halls and courts until he came to the apartments of his Excellency’s wife. For a moment he hesitated at the oval silken-draped doorway, then putting the curtains aside he stepped softly in.

By the screen, as if it had never been moved, stood his chair, beside it the high ebony table with its roseleaf marble top, and in front of it with her face toward the screen sat the wife, as she had sat many months before.

For a moment the Breton pressed back against the curved lintel, then went softly over and stood beside her. She did not move nor give any sign of recognition as the Breton approached, only her little hands folded in her lap pressed together more tightly, until her finger tips became darkly red. It is not known how long this silence lasted, for, though time may never cease, there are moments in the horologue of love, which are not counted.

“I have come back,” said the Breton finally in soft monotonous tones.

At the sound of his voice, the wife’s hands trembled and relaxed; a slight feverish flush diffused her face, but she gave no sign that she heard him.

“I have come back to you,” he repeated.

A tremor shot through her, and a faint flush darkened and spread to brow and to neck.

“I understand it all now,” he continued vaguely. “You remember when your hand touched my robe? At first I thought it was the hand of God, for it seemed as though I were in heaven. Then came another thought and I cast you aside. For this I have suffered. In every soft sound of night have I heard you fall again and again, without a cry, just a silken crash. Even God would not heed my prayers to drown that sound. In the day I beggared time before the Gateway. By night I prayed, did penance, and sleeplessly watched for the reluctant shadows of dawn, a dawn that punished me with a thousand memories; with the larks’ song a-fluttering from their bamboo cages; with flowers whose fragrance choked and whose colours burned my eyes; with laughter and the dreadful crinkling of silk. Again at night it was prayer and penance or pain, for the river murmured with the tones of your voice, and the stars stole their lights from your eyes and looked in reproachful pain down upon me.”

Presently the Breton took from the bosom of his robe the manuscripts left by the Unknown.

“Three days ago I found these secretly beside my crucifix”; and he looked dumbly at the envelopes he half extended toward her.

“He is gone,” he continued, a resigned softness creeping into the monotony of his voice, “and it was in this letter that he asked me to go away, for it was sin to remain. Of this I took counsel of God, and for two nights I prayed to our Christ on His crucifix, and to-day at dawn, God bade me go.”

“Did you know,” he asked with singular simplicity, “that I have come back to you?”

The wife moved slightly, and the light in her great eyes deepened.

“You have no husband, for husbands are searched out by God, as wives are sent by Him from heaven. On the second night before my crucifix all things became clear to me, and doubts were brushed aside. We will go to another country; to America, where all are free; to Australia, where all are forgotten, or to other lands where men are lost. We will be always together; I can look at you and you can put your hand upon my shoulder, and it will be as in heaven. We will live together forever, for whom God marries He never parts. I have planned how we shall leave the city,” he continued, his voice vibrant with eagerness. “You know no one can leave this city by night, but on the eve of the Propitiation of the Gods of the Waters all of the city gates and ward gates will be open. You can leave the park by the western postern and I will meet you there the second hour after darkness. We will not go to Hongkong, for they would send ships and bring us back. We cannot remain in Yingching, for they would find us. We cannot go to another town in the Empire, for all of the magistrates in the Middle Kingdom will search for you. I have thought carefully of all this and have planned that when you come to the postern, I will meet you with a sedan; I will take you to the river, where I will have a river boat waiting, then we will go up the river to the Grotto of the Sleepless Dragon. Men fear this Cavern of Yu Ngao, but there is no danger. I will go there first with Tsang and prepare it for you, and when you go we will take Tsang’s wife. We can stay there until people forget, then we will take a boat and go down the river by night until we come to the sea. At Pakhoi we will take a sea junk and go to Singapore, for there all the ships of the world meet.

“Will you go?”

The wife did not reply, so they remained motionless in silence, and time passed as it had passed with them before.

The sun slid slowly down the cloudless September heavens; the shadow of the feathery bamboo crept again into the chamber and gently slunk away; but when the rose-saffron of the afterglow flushed upward the western sky and diffused its soft light through the court, the wife left her stool and crossed over to the shell-latticed window, and as when the summer storm is past and the burdened lily tilts its gathered diamonds to the sun, so her tears, trembling on her cheeks, sparkled joyously in the amber light.

When the melancholy “coo-ee, coo-ee” of the argus-eyed pheasant sounded softly through the twilight, she came back from the window, her little hands clasped together, her eyes downcast. For several moments she stood shyly beside him, then looking up, said:

“I will go.”

For some time the Breton stood as if he had not heard, then kneeling, leaned forward until his head touched her robe. The wife lay her hand lightly upon his head, and for the first time there fell upon him that blessing, which, like mercy, has a double sanctity, and though its voice is unheard among the fretful noises of the world, yet its reverberations passing from a woman’s heart go on and on through vast distances and depths until its echoes cease in that uncertain chasm—a man’s breast.

“I knew you would come back,” she said presently, her voice quivering between laughter and sobs. “When I touched your robes and felt you tremble I knew that you loved me, and when you took hold of my wrists you do not know what happiness came over me. I felt as if you were going to pick me up and fly away forever to that heaven you have spoken of so often. Then—then you threw me to the floor.”

She felt the Breton shudder, and she reached down and took hold of his ears and tilted his head back. For a moment she looked into his eyes, then for the first time in many months the room echoed softly with her laughter.

“You must not look that way,” she cried roguishly as she twitched his ears. “Don’t you know that that was a most happy parting compared to the first time you went away, when you left me without a word, chained by torturing doubt? But this time you threw me to the floor, and then I knew that you loved me. I have not been unhappy, nor have I been joyful these many weeks, but I have been contented, and in the airy tapestry of my dreams have I embroidered ten thousand times just such a scene as this. Each day at that time, when you were accustomed to come, I sought my stool here beside the screen, waited, and now you have come as I knew you would.”

Impulsively she knelt down beside him and in the gathering dusk soon one figure could not be distinguished from the other.

Few spectacles are ever given for man to witness more melancholy than the dissolution of an ancient dynasty; an end inevitably tragic and often leaving its solemn sign, as did the dissipation of the Mings, forever upon the people.

For two centuries and a half had this family of the acolyte ruled over a wide portion of earth and then did it go out, tragically, but in a manner befitting a dynasty whose past had been so filled with greatness.

When Tongshing—the last of his race to rule from the Dragon Throne—found that the east gate of his capital was invested by besieging armies, he retraced his steps to the Palace and sounded the gong to summon his courtiers. None appeared. Then alone with the eunuch, Wen Chenan, the old monarch sought his favourite spot on Wansui Hill, and there beneath its solitary tree wrote this, his final protest:

“For seventeen years I have reigned from the Dragon Throne and now even rebels come to insult me in my capital. Evidently this is a punishment sent by Heaven. But I am not alone guilty. My ministers are worse than myself. They have ruined me by concealing the true condition of affairs.

“With what countenance shall I after death be able to appear before my forefathers? You, who have brought me to this unhappy end, take my body and hack it to pieces. I shall not protest. But spare my people and refrain from doing them injury.”

Then this old man, who was a monarch, hung himself on the solitary juniper tree.

After the Emperor’s death the Ming officials in the south of China crowned one kinsman after another as his successor, but each, oppressed by the curse of his race, died in a manner not less tragic than the melancholy end of Tongshing. In the course of this Imperial extinction the choice at last fell upon the Prince Yu Ngao, who was proclaimed Emperor in the old city of Yingching.

Shortly after Yu Ngao had been crowned the city was besieged by the Manchus and captured on the 26th of November, 1650, more than one-half million of its inhabitants perishing in the assault. It was supposed that upon this day the young Emperor also died, but such was not the case, for on the night before the final attack, the Emperor and three hundred of his most devoted followers, taking with them the Imperial treasure, escaped from the city by means of a water-gate situated between the Gate of Eternal Rest and the southwest corner of the city walls, through which a large canal runs from the river into the city.

It was the intention of the fugitives to make their way into Kwangsi and join the Ming forces in that Province; their flight being up the Chu Kiang to the North River, thence to the Lien Chau River and across the mountains into Kwangsi. But after the capture of the city, their escape being discovered, a large force set out in pursuit, the fugitives having but one day and two nights’ start. On arriving at the gorge of the Blind Boy, less than one-third the distance of their journey, they found themselves but a half day’s march ahead of their pursuers and feeling that the end had come they selected for their last stand a high shelf of rock in the mouth of the gorge.

From this point, looking up the cañon, there is seen with great distinctness on a perpendicular wall of rock about two hundred feet above the water, the “Blind Boy,” which gives the gorge its name. Looking at the image from this angle, the form, features and sad blind expression of the eyes is vividly seen. The Emperor with his little army standing upon this high shelf peering through the purple shadows of this great gorge perceived the image of the Blind Boy and as they looked—it is so related—the eyes opened and gazed benignly, Buddha-like, down upon them. Then as the eyes closed slowly and reluctantly a peasant appeared upon the shelf and prostrating himself before the Emperor begged to lead him to a place of safety. Receiving imperial sanction he took the force by a circuitous route above the gorge to a cavern whose secret recesses were apparently alone known to him.

Yu Ngao’s small regiment had scarcely arrived in the vicinity of the cavern when their tireless foe appeared. It was with difficulty that part of the men defended the approach until the Emperor and the remainder of his force, carrying the imperial treasure, retired in safety. Again and again the enemy attempted to capture the cavern but owing to the ease of its defence they were repulsed. After a number of months’ close watch they attacked again. This time there was no combat and they entered—entered to be seen no more.

Years passed and other forces went into the cavern, to return never. After this, during long intervals of time, adventurous persons have gone in to search for the great treasure, but none of them by man were ever seen again.

Thus the people call this the Grotto of the Sleepless Dragon and—avoid it. They have surrounded it with a halo of mysticism and a semi-sacredness clings to it. The country around abounds with marvellous tales told of its dragon, which guards, sleepless and relentless, its treasure of gold and jade, of pearls and priceless rubies, until again the Mings shall come to their own.

The word holds no more wonderful scene than when after having ascended a fjord that opens into the North River, and upon whose jade-green waters the sun shines but a moment each day, a turn is made and this marvellous white precipice rises overhead sheer out of the water. Four caves are to be seen half-veiled with vines and from out of a great fissure a third way up the cliff falls a cataract in a broad, heavy sheet of glittering silver. When it strikes against the rocks, it then comes down like snow or is blown upward a veiling mist. These falls are broken four times by projecting shelves, the last drop being the longest. Just below the second shelf to the right of the falls and almost invisible from the stream are stone steps cut diagonally across the face of the cliff, beginning in some shrubs and disappearing under the falling waters, while above them hangs a rusted chain suspended in two long folds. Under this projecting shelf, hid by the veil of waters, entered by these stone steps and rusted chain, is the Grotto of the Sleepless Dragon.

The formation of the cliff is a calciferous, conglomerate mass of fantastic beauty. The upper right hand side has the appearance of the façade of some vast age-eroded cathedral; serrated pinnacles and slender spires point skyward in irregular rising series. Here complete a flying buttress; there one half hid in ruins. In one place arches, in another cavernous recesses, that might have been windows; pillars, gargoyles and angels are scattered from top to bottom; while around each spire and buttress, arch and pillar, gargoyle and angel, twine crepe myrtle and festoons of vinnig, whose clusters of blossoms sweeten the air of the shadowed cañon.

These vines and cavities have become the homes of innumerable birds: doves, thrushes, cormorants and francolins, mimahs, kingfishers, owls, ospreys and eagles, while at dusk the hundred-footed fox and spirit-cat creep about its broken face, in and out of its columns and creepers.

One day these birds fluttered and screamed, the fox and spirit-cat peeped out of their dens for a boat had crept into their solitude and lingered in the emerald lake.

Presently two men got out of it, followed with difficulty the narrow, vine-covered path, crossed the stones and disappeared under the falling waters. All day the birds watched them go back and forth, bearing their loads into the cavern whence no man ever returns.

So the day passed and along toward the latter part of the afternoon one of the men went down to the boat and remained there, smoking peacefully. The other climbed up the face of the cliff until he reached a narrow shelf near the far end of the fissure from which the cataract burst. Bright little birds with blue wings and brown breasts, a-tilting on the vines, francolins perched on the crags or fluttering in circles, looked wonderingly at this man standing silently upon that perilous projection and gazing contentedly over the lower cliffs to the westward.

With the setting of the sun came the gorgeous afterglow of this latitude, burning the cloud banks above the purple-misted mountains with gold, alternating with amethyst and lilac and shafting over this solitude their exquisite hues and lavishing them unseen upon the man pressed against the cliff. At last a purple veil rose from the gorge: eagles and companies of ospreys soaring majestically above and below him now began to wheel, scream, poise, and dart. The spirit-cat and hundred-footed fox came to look at him, meditatively, fearlessly, knowingly, for it was dusk.

When the man clinging to the vines and the crags descended the birds returned to their accustomed roosts and night brooded gently over all.