Page:Ernest Bramah - Kai Lungs Golden Hours.djvu/307

 you should not journey to the Capital and make the attempt."

"The Highest!" exclaimed Ten-teh, with a pang of unfathomable emotion. "Is there then no middle way? Who is Ten-teh, the obscure and illiterate fisherman, that he should thrust himself into the presence of the Son of Heaven? If the mother of the dutiful Chou Yii could destroy herself and her family at one blow to the end that her son might serve his sovereign with a single heart, how degraded an outcast must he be who would obtrude his own trivial misfortunes at so critical a time."

"'A thorn in one's own little finger is more difficult to endure than a sword piercing the sublime Emperor's arm,'" replied the headman, resuming his occupation. "But if your angle of regarding the various obligations is as you have stated it, then there is obviously nothing more to be said. In any case it is more than doubtful whether the Fountain of Justice would raise an eyelash if you, by every combination of fortunate circumstance, succeeded in reaching his presence."

"The headman has spoken, and his word is ten times more weighty than that of an ill-educated fisherman," replied Ten-teh submissively, and he departed.

From that time Ten-teh sought to sustain life upon roots and wild herbs which he collected laboriously and not always in sufficient quantities from the woods and rank wastes around. Soon even this resource failed him in a great measure, for a famine of unprecedented harshness swept over that part of the province. All supplies of adequate food ceased, and those who survived were driven by the pangs of hunger to consume weeds and the bark of trees, fallen leaves, insects of the