Page:Ralph Paine--The praying skipper.djvu/154

130 You Han turned off the road, threaded a course through the yards of a shattered temple, and drew up by a marble altar. "Have chow now," said he, and the summons to breakfast aroused a shadow of animation in the deserter. He knew not where the meal was coming from, but he was past wondering, and the Chinese youth was in full command of the sorry expedition. You Han crawled into the cart and produced a charcoal stove, dried fish, potatoes, and a teapot. "All belong my cousin. He keep store; pay bimeby," said the boy, with what might have passed for a wink.

The companions ate in silence. Shame had begun to march in the foreground of the deserter's thoughts, crowding fear a little to the rear. The soldier of a conquering race was as helpless as a child in the hands of one of the conquered whom he had not considered wholly human, whose swarms had fled like rats before the path of the columns in khaki. The fugitive cursed and hated himself, possessed by an unmanly humiliation impossible to