still secretly admiring his independent attitude and a certain roughness he had sedulously cultivated, said to him in discreet voices:

"You ought to have come sooner. Your father has been sick these many days. Had it not been for the neighbours he would have fared ill indeed. Money and food are lacking."

Now he hastened on. His bravado had vanished and there was gloom in his heart. In some trepidation he opened the door of his father's hut and walked in, watched from the street by all his youthful friends.

Inside, stretched on the rude bed of boards, lay his father, quite motionless and covered in a sheep-skin coat, although the weather was warm.

"I have returned," said the son, coming up to him and speaking in his quick city vernacular which was so unlike his father's slow uncouth country speech. "How has this happened?" he added, bending down now. The resentment within him had faded, for was this not his father?

The sick man only groaned for reply, fixing on him glassy eyes.

"How is it?" repeated the youth in the query which every one in the country uses a dozen times a day, and feeling at a loss what to do. He had never before been confronted with the phenomenon of physical collapse. It left him awkward and chagrined.

"It is fever," mumbled the father at length sighing heavily. "If there were money for medicine it might be better. But the neighbours have given me freely and I cannot borrow more."

"I will attend to it," said the stripling, and with that he marched out again and down the street to a shop with a gaudy gilt front and a massive counter covered with blue cloth.

"Medicine for fever," he said, abruptly putting down a piece of silver, and leaning against the counter to see that full weight was given him. Presently he received twenty-four little packets done up in rough brown paper which were guaranteed to be the very best of the herbalist's art. With these in his hand he marched back and settled down to the task of tending his sick parent. He displayed the same phlegm he had shown in the smuggling of wine. Three times a day he drew water from the common well and lit the fire and boiled congee, and bought things as if he had been trained to housework all his life; for this curious nation is like that—all can settle to any task with patience and ease. But his father instead of getting better, became worse. Sometimes for many hours he lay without speaking or moving, and the boy frowning deeply, became gloomy and very silent.

"It is a bad business," he said to the neighbours when they met him on the street. "He makes no progress."

One night he was awakened from a dead sleep by the man's cries and the thrusting movements of his arms. He sprang up and lit the tallow candle in great alarm. His father was sitting up catching at his throat and gasping for breath, a hideous sight, with his forehead so long unshaven and his queue so unkempt. The boy tried to give him water but the bowl fell from the palsied hand. He picked it up and supported the sufferer but with a sudden twist the man turned over and died.

Wang the Ninth, in the presence of death, cried aloud like a frightened animal and then ran to the door, shouting that his father was dead. He had never seen death come before—it came to him as an injustice rather than a blow. He wished others to measure it as he measured it: wished them to realize the drama. But the neighbours were sunk in sleep and when he beat on their doors he only heard them stir and mutter that the fire-devils which prowl at night were around. Nothing would induce them to open although they must have plainly heard the boy's voice.

So quaking with fear he crept back at last and sat with his head on his knees and his teeth chattering looking at the recumbent motionless figure and waiting for dawn.

When daylight came he went out and the neighbours came willingly enough then, in a never-ending stream to stare and make comments. He mourned loudly, beating himself on the breast and looking very miserable, death being an important and ceremonious event and being so considered by all. As there were no relatives, the headman of the locality came and made a rude inventory, and then reported the case to the coffin-guild who prepared a suitable coffin and sent two men with lime to pack the corpse. All the children of the neighbourhood stood in a crowd together at the door, watching and trying to see every movement, for a burial is like a marriage and never fails to awaken interest, the one being the ending of life, just as the other is its procreation.

For a day or so things remained like that with the coffin in the hut. Then when everything was in order, they dressed him in coarse white mourner's cloth and placed a cap of the same material on his head, and the coffin was lifted up by four men on carrier's poles; and preceded by a fellow blacksmith, who carried paper money to be burnt in imitation shoes of silver (such as the dead man had never dreamed of in his life) and followed by the mourning boy, the coffin was carried to the temple of the locality, pending formal disposal.