Page:Ernest Bramah - Kai Lungs Golden Hours.djvu/126

 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 formidable mass of papers lying near at hand, had not Lao Ting suddenly restrained him.

"It shall be written with clarified ink on paper of a special excellence," declared the student. "Take the brush, Sheng-yin, and write. It almost, repays this person for the loss of a degree to behold the formation of signs so unapproachable as yours."

"Lao Ting," replied the visitor, pausing in his task, "you are occasionally inspired, but the weakness of your character results in a lack of caution. In this matter, therefore, be warned: 'The crocodile opens his jaws; the rat-trap closes his; keep yours shut. When Lao Ting returned after a scrupulously observed six days of absence he could not fail to become aware that the city was in an uproar, and the evidence of this increased as he approached the cheap and lightly esteemed quarter in which those of literary ambitions found it convenient to reside. Remembering Sheng-yin's parting, he forbore to draw attention to himself by questioning any, but when he reached the door of his own dwelling he discovered the one of whom he was thinking, standing, as it were, between the posts.

"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