Page:The Specimen Case.djvu/254

Rh as he passed through the village, and he now adopted it as a pleasant little compliment to the neighbourhood.

"Any other?" asked the farmer, whose knowledge of the ways of the Central Kingdom was not extensive.

"Of the obscure house of Kiu," replied Yen Sung for no particular reason, and as Claude Kiu he remained in the annals of Stonecroft Farm.

The days and weeks passed by; all the harvesting was over, but Yen Sung still remained. Why, on his part, it might be hard to say, for he had enough money now to take him safely out of the country, and had he been a human being instead of a mere yellow man it would have to be written that at Stonecroft Farm he suffered much. The men early discovered that he never returned a blow, so, to confess the shameful truth, to prove their manliness or to impress their moral superiority, some frequently struck and kicked him. Dead mice and other carrion were thrown into his food as he ate, in exquisite drollery. Whenever Harold Holt visited the farm he never failed to drop upon good ground a few light-hearted suggestions for turning Yen Sung's eccentricities to humorous account. Garstang rather liked the impassive pagan, but there was much taking place that he could not see.

If he might be judged by his works, Yen Sung outshone all his associates in the Christian virtues. To the blow on the right cheek he turned the left; he was patient, industrious, long-suffering; he bore the burdens of others. Only, it should be recorded that in moments of solitude, especially after suffering an indignity, Yen Sung sometimes took a very bright knife from beneath his tunic and proceeded to whet it quietly and systematically upon his leather belt, although it was always keen enough to split a hair. This might have given some colour to Harold's warning were it not that the Oriental