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"Perchance he is saddened by our city's loyalty," interposed the benign Shan Tien, "for if he is smiling now it is on the side of his face removed from this one's gaze." "The other side of his face is assuredly where he will be made to smile ere long," acquiesced Ming-shu, not altogether to his chief's approval, as the analogy was already his.
"The name has a somewhat familiar echo," interrupted the Fountain of Justice, with a genial interest in what was going on, rare in one of his exalted rank. "Have we not seen the ill-conditioned thing before?" "He has tasted of your unutterable clemency in the past," replied Ming-shu, "this being by no means his first appearance thus. Claiming to be a story-teller "
To mark this reconciliation the Mandarin to-morrow night will make a feast of wine and song in honour of Ming-shu and into this assembly you will be led, bound and wearing the wooden cang, to contribute to their offensive mirth.
"Yet in the ideal state of purity aimed at by the illustrious founders of our race " began Kai Lung, and ceased abruptly, remembering. "As it is, we are in the state of Tsin in the fourteenth of the heaven-sent Ching," retorted Hwa-mei capably. "The insatiable Ming-shu will continue to seek your life, calling to his aid every degraded subterfuge.
"Your design is a worthy and enlightened one," interposed the Mandarin, with dignity. "What you have somewhat incapably overlooked, Ming-shu, is the fact that I never greet this intelligent and painstaking young man without reminding him of the imminence of his fate and of his suitability for it." "Truth adorns your lips and accuracy anoints your palate," volunteered Kai Lung.
"The first of those to prostrate themselves before your enlightened clemency, Excellence, is a notorious assassin who, under another name, has committed many crimes," began the execrable Ming-shu. "He confesses that, now calling himself Kai Lung, he has recently journeyed from Loo-chow, where treason ever wears a smiling face."
"Behold!" she explained, "at dawn the corrupt Ming-shu will pass within our gates again, nor is it prudent to assume that his enmity has lessened." "On the contrary," replied Kai Lung, "like that unnatural reptile that lives on air, his malice will have grown upon the voidness of its cause. As the wise Ling-kwang remarks: 'He who plants a vineyard with one hand "
"This rendering shall be to the one that has gone before as a spreading banyan-tree overshadowing an immature shrub." "Forbear!" exclaimed a discordant voice, and the sour-eyed Ming-shu revealed his inopportune presence from behind a hanging veil. "Is it meet, O eminence, that in this person's absence you should thus consort on terms of fraternity with tomb-riflers and grain-thieves?"
"How did your subterfuge proceed, and with what satisfaction was the history of Weng Cho received?" "That," replied Hwa-mei modestly, "will provide the matter for an autumn tale, when seated around a pine-cone fire. In the meanwhile this protracted ordeal takes an ambiguous bend." "To what further end does the malignity of the ill-made Ming-shu now shape itself?
Ming-shu now openly avers that if this and that are thus and thus the rising has justice in its ranks, while at the same time he has it put abroad that this is but a cloak the better to serve the state. "This is the more readily understood as it is the common case on every like occasion." "Then doubtless there are instances waiting on your lips.
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