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Now there was present among the council one wrapped in a mantle made of rustling leaves, who spoke in a smooth, low voice, very cunning and persuasive, with a plan already shaped that seemed to offer well and to safeguard Ko'en Cheng's word.
If we fail to knock upon the outer gate of Ti-foo at noon to-day Ko'en Cheng will say: 'My word returns. It is as naught. If they who go are clad as underlings, Ko'en Cheng will cry: 'What slaves be these! Do men break plate with dogs? Our message was for six of noble style. Ah-tang but mocks." He sat down again moodily. "Let others speak."
Let six attend taking neither sword nor shield, neither hat nor sandal, nor yet anything between. 'There are six thousand more, shall be their taunt, 'but Ko'en Cheng's hospitality drew rein at six. He feared lest they might carry arms; behold they have come naked. Ti-foo need not tremble." "It is well," agreed Ah-tang. "At least, nothing better offers. Let five accompany you."
"Doubtless," replied Ko'en Cheng, with velvet bitterness: "but the sun has long since set and the moon is not yet risen. The appearance of a solitary star yesterday would have been more foot-guiding than the forecast of a meteor next week. This person's thumb-signed word is passed and to-morrow Ah-tang will hold him to it."
In this way he came to the open space known as the Space of the Eight Directions, where Ko'en Cheng and his nobles were assembled. "One comes alone," they cried. "This guise is as a taunt." "Naked to a naked town the analogy is plain." "Shall the mocker be suffered to return?" Thus the murmur grew. Then one, more impetuous than the rest, swung clear his sword and drew it.
Ko'en Cheng having become vastly wealthy as the result of entering into an arrangement with Ah-tang before Ti-foo was sacked, it did not seem unreasonable to Tian that Ning was in some way influencing his destiny from afar. On this understanding he ultimately married Mu, and thereby founded a prolific posterity who inherited a great degree of his powers.
Mentally inflated at the success of their efforts and the impending surrender of Ti-foo, Tian's band suffered their energies to relax. In the dusk of that same evening one disguised in the skin of a goat browsed from bush to bush until he reached the town. There, throwing off all restraint, he declared his errand to Ko'en Cheng.
"There are moments," said Ah-tang, "when this person's admitted accomplishment of transfixing three foemen with a single javelin at a score of measured paces does not seem to provide a possible solution. Undoubtedly we are face to face with a crafty plan, and Ko'en Cheng has surely heard that Wu Sien is marching from the west.
If this were an imagined tale, framed to entice the credulous, herein would its falseness cry aloud, but even in this age Ning may still be seen from time to time with a tail of fire in his wake, missing the path of his return as N'guk ordained. Thus bereft, Tian was on the point of giving way to a seemly despair when a message concerned with Mu, the only daughter of Ko'en Cheng, reached him.
"With a fervent hand-clasp as of one brother to another, and a passionate assurance of mutual good-will, KO'EN CHENG, Important Official." "It is received," replied Ah-tang, when the message had been made known to him. "Six captains will attend." Alas! it is well written: "There is often a space between the fish and the fish-plate."
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