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"It is well said, 'Do not look at robbers sharing out their spoil: look at them being executed," urged Sheng-yin.
Should he eat his words, may his body be suffocated beneath five cart-loads of books and his weary ghost chained to that of a leprous mule. It is spoken." "Truly. But it may as well be written also." With this expression of narrow-minded suspicion Sheng-yin would have taken up one from a considerable mass of papers lying near at hand, had not Lao Ting suddenly restrained him.
"Thirty-seven taels, five hundred cash, are the utmost that your obliging friends would hazard in the quest," announced Sheng-yin definitely. "On the day following that of the final competition the sum will be honourably " "By no means," interrupted the other, with unswerving firmness. "How thus is the journey to be defrayed? In advance, assuredly." "The requirement is unusual.
"Your experience is deep and wide," replied Lao Ting, the circumstance that Sheng-yin had already tried and failed three and thirty times adding an edge to the words; "yet if it is written it is written." "Doubtless," retorted Sheng-yin no less capably; "but it will never be set to music.
Lao Ting was the very last of those who were successful; Sheng-yin was the next, and was thus the first of those who were unsuccessful. It was as much as the youth had secretly dared to hope, and much better than he had generally feared. In Sheng-yin's case, however, it was infinitely worse than he had ever contemplated. Regarding Lao Ting as the cause of his disgrace he planned a sordid revenge.
"Lao Ting," exclaimed Sheng-yin, without waiting to make any polite reference to the former person's food or condition, "in spite of this calamity you are doubtless prepared to carry out the spirit of your oath?" "Doubtless," replied Lao Ting affably. "Yet what is the nature of the calamity referred to, and how does it affect the burden of my vow?" "Has not the tiding reached your ear?
"Sheng-yin," said Lao Ting, with courteous firmness, yet so moving the door so that while he passed in the former person remained outside, "you have sought, at the expenditure of thirty-seven taels five hundred cash, to deflect Destiny from her appointed line. The result has been lamentable to all or nearly all concerned.
When the days that remained before the opening of the trial could be counted on the fingers of one hand, there came, at a certain hour, a summons on the outer door of Lao Ting's house, and in response to his spoken invitation there entered one, Sheng-yin, a competitor.
"How then fares it that due warning of the change was not set forth?" "The matter is as long as The Wall and as deep as seven wells," grumbled Sheng-yin, "and the Hoang Ho in flood is limpid by its side.
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