Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/53

 sentence. The shot missed; for the Emperor, shrewdly remarking that the inscription bore no signs of celestial workmanship, had the stone publicly burnt in the presence of a large concourse of persons, and concluded the solemnity by the massacre of all the spectators. It may seem surprising that, after so signal and unexpected a defeat, the malcontents should have resorted to a precisely similar ruse a second time; but such was the line they pursued. Brave as was the face that the Emperor put upon the menace he had already received, it was easy to see that he was seriously perturbed. He became gloomy and sullen, while his love of cruelty was fostered by the jealousy and suspicion which now made him their prey. In this condition, we may well imagine the effect upon his superstitious mind when a second stone was placed in his hands—a block of jade, engraved with an imitation of the tortoise-shell. This, he was gravely assured, had been presented to a courier, on his way from a distant province, by a strange and mysterious being clad in flowing robes, with an injunction to lose no time in delivering it to his imperial master; "for," affirmed the apparition, "in less than a year the Dragon Ancestor will be no more." Whether the Emperor really believed the fabrication, or whether he was shrewd enough to recognise the terrible truth that the danger threatening him came from his own subjects, we need not stop to inquire. He turned pale as he took the cold stone up in his hands, and appeared greatly agitated. It was some time before he could recover himself sufficiently to speak; and when at last the words came, they amounted only to a feeble utterance that, the Dragon being immortal, the legend was absurd. Alas! the very fact that that acceptation of the term