Page:Ernest Bramah - Kai Lungs Golden Hours.djvu/112

 throughout the province, to attain high office without delay, to lead a victorious army against the encroaching barbarian foe and thus to save the Empire in a moment of emergency, to acquire vast riches (in a not clearly defined manner), to become the intimate counsellor of the grateful Emperor, and finally to receive posthumous honours of unique distinction, the harmonious personality of Hoa-mi being inextricably entwined among these achievements.

At other times, however, he became subject to a funereal conviction that he would fail discreditably in the examinations to an accompaniment of the ridicule and contempt of all who knew him, that he would never succeed in acquiring sufficient brass cash to ensure a meagre sustenance even for himself, and that he would probably end his lower existence by ignominious decapitation, so that his pale and hungry ghost would be unable to find its way from place to place and be compelled to remain on the same spot through all eternity. Yet so quickly did these two widely diverging vistas alternate in Lao Ting's mind that on many occasions he was under the influence of both presentiments at the same time.

It will thus be seen that Lao Ting was becoming involved in emotions of a many-sided hue, by which his whole future would inevitably be affected, when an event took place which greatly tended to restore his tranquillity of mind. He was, at the usual hour, lurking unseen in the path of Hoa-mi's approach when the water-buffalo, with the perversity of its kind, suddenly withdrew itself from the amiable control of its attendant's restraining hand and precipitated its resistless footsteps towards the long grass in which