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246 mind remains an insoluble riddle, and it would be as reasonable and more charitable to assume that Yen Sung's formidable blade was intended for no more desperate purpose than that of smoothing its owner's chin. There is even a more amiable possibility, for one morning about this time Edith Garstang found upon her plate at the breakfast-table a little box of wood and inlaid straw, which proved to contain a variety of figures carved with taste and untiring skill in bone and fruit stones, and one or two in ivory. There were mandarins in official robes; trees of gnarled, fantastic growth; tigers, elephants and serpents; a wonderful street scene, with stalls, merchants, beggars, a procession of priests, and all the details of a busy thoroughfare; a child-bride in her ornamental wedding-chair; and a number of fearsome objects which could only be accounted for as evil demons, though more probably in Yen Sung's mind they stood as the embodiment of beneficent spirits. It was a collection which must have occupied all his spare hours almost from the day of his arrival.

Edith was enchanted with the grace and delicacy of the pretty things, but Garstang remained thoughtfully silent, and when the story came to Harold's ears he vowed softly between smiling lips that Yen Sung should presently suffer somewhat for his presumption. The immediate settlement arrived at by Garstang was to take the box in one hand and a sovereign in the other, and to tell Yen Sung kindly but definitely that he must take back the toys or be paid with the money. It furnished fresh proof of the sordid nature of the Chinaman's instincts, for he took the coin without a word of protest, and when alone cheerfully added it to his secret store. Thenceforth he carved no more, occupying himself with the composition of sundry notices in his own tortuous language, which he afterwards fastened to the branches