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 the whole treasure to buy him off, and I'm not going to sacrifice that, after all this, till the last gasp. No, there's not a thing to do but wait and see what turns up."

"What do you suppose their idea is?" Alan asked.

"Don't know," said his brother. "Get us off in some lonely place, I suppose, and either kill us, maroon us, or shut us up, while they skip off with the box. What we do depends on what they do. Good heavens, how I wish I had a revolver!"

"I suppose Mr. Tyler ought to have seen that we had one."

"How could anybody imagine a moving-picture stunt like this? It was all our fault for being such geese as to believe in that boat yarn in the first place. We might have known old Huen wouldn't rig up any such plan."

"But you don't know anything, in China," Alan objected.

"That's very true, too," Mark agreed, shaking his head.

Night had come again—twilight—blurring the forbidding, unfamiliar landscape. Small mist-wraiths coiled up from the warm face of