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and avowed brigand, an open foe to law, a these predatory clubs; they test their neo thing most hateful of all others to bureau phytes by a severe initiatory penance, by cratic pedants like the formal mandarins. hunger and pain and fatigue. A tremen The kouan-kouen are not the most unpopu dous oath of obedience and fidelity is enforced lar persons in the Central Land : they are by the certainty of dire vengeance on the admired by women, praised by men, sung of false brother; and the Chinese avow that the in the rude ballads of the peasantry, and when faith observed by these robbers towards each they mingle in the crowd of a village festival other is remarkably evinced, even under tor tures the most elaborate. they are regarded pretty much as the moun To preserve the Emperor's peace through tain bandit is viewed by the rustics of Corsica and Sardinia. There have been Chinese out the realm, the principal agents are the Robin Hoods who have worn a pigtail and policemen attached to the tribunals, small satin boots, and quaffed corn-brandy in the and great, who are known by their red interval of their professional duties, no doubt, robes, their high black caps, and the official and the hardy marauders are not seldom lib pheasant-feather surmounting their heads eral of their ill-got wealth, and scatter among like a horn. A mere magistrate will preside the lowly what they wrest from the moneyed over a score of these picturesque alguazils, world. These free-handed depredators, the while the yamun of a prefect or a criminal kouan-kouen, do not rely entirely on the inspector contains fifty or more armed con popularity which their exploits and occa stables, some of whom act as gaolers, and sional gifts create for them among the indigent others as headsmen in case of need. The villages never have a prison more im classes. They have confederates in the cities; their spies haunt the markets and posing than a round house, where culprits hang about the inns; they have allies in the may be locked up while an escort is prepar ing; but all walled towns have their peniten enemy's camp, and pay handsomely for intel tiary, where the wretched gaol-birds are ligence. Here, a police brigadier gives timely warning of an expedition against the crowded together like cattle in a pen, where the scowling governor economizes on the band : there, a sleek cashier notifies by writ ing that such and such bales, or so much mere rations of rice, and where the horrors ready money, the property of his employers, of Dante's Inferno are squeezed into pocketwill traverse a certain road or canal on a compass. The Chinese of all ranks dread particular day. The kouan-kouen are bold these prisons more than death itself. It is as well as wily; often it happens that they not that they are dens of misery, but that have been honest, well-meaning folk in their the confinement is irksome to poor Ching, who is used to travel, who is anything but time, goaded into outlawry by some persecu tion on the part of the magistrates, or stripped the vegetable we deem him, and who has of their patrimony by a lawsuit. Many of been in many a town and ranged many a them can show the scars of torments wrongly league of land and water. Ching has won inflicted by some capricious pedant; others derful powers of endurance; he can sing have seen a son die in the cangue or under and chirrup quite blithely on short commons, the lash for a light or imaginary fault; some can sleep in a corner, can be cooped up where have been members of a secret society; and elbow-room is scanty, food meagre, and oxy detection has turned them into beasts of gen scarce, and still keep his politeness prey. Not every one can be a member of untarnished and his heart gay.