Page:Ernest Bramah - Kai Lungs Golden Hours.djvu/144

 official and visited justice impartially on us all. It was our affair, and you, who are a stranger, have done ill."

"I did you wrong, Mandarin," said Weng, resuming his journey; "you took me for one of them. I pass you the parting of the woman Che, burrowers in the cow-heap called Li-yong."

"Oi-ye!" exclaimed a voice behind, "but yonder earth-beetles haply have not been struck off the Tablets and found that a maiden with well-matched eyes can watch two ways at once, all of a morning; and thereby death through red spectacles is not that same death through blue spectacles. Things in their appointed places, noble companion."

"Greetings, wayfarer," said Weng, stopping. "The path narrows somewhat inconveniently hereabout. Take honourable precedence."

"The narrower the better to defend then," replied the stranger good-humouredly. "Whereto, also, two swords cut a larger slice than one. Without doubt fivescore valiant bowmen will soon be a-ranging when they hear that the enemy goes upon two feet, and then ill befall who knows not the passes." As he spoke an arrow, shot from a distance, flew above their heads.

"Why should you bear a part with me, and who are you who know these recent things?" demanded Weng doubtfully.

"I am one of many, we being a branch of that great spreading lotus the Triad, though called by the tillers here around the League of Tomb-Haunters, because we must be sought in secret places. The things I have spoken I know, because we have many ears, and in our