Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 4 (1925-04).djvu/101

 beyond their usual scope. When a girl married, she married all the brothers of the family. Naturally, in their connubial arrangements, most of the brothers were diplomatic enough to be away much of the time.

Steppling was charmed by the spirit of mystery that hovered over everything. He longed to get beneath the mask which each person seemed to wear. These people seemed to lack personality; yet personality of some sort they must have had. When they went into their huts, did they just pass into blackness like candles blown out? Did they have any home life at all? He doubted it. Were their affections, hopes, desires, loves, all blunted? Did they ever read? It was like being in a dead city. No one approached him. No one talked to him. He seldom heard a human voice, for the voices of the people were usually drowned by the frightful screeching of the wind through the mountain passes.

Fortunately he had sufficient food with him to last him another month. When that was gone he intended to try to buy food from the natives. In what currency could he pay for it? English currency would be of little use among these savage hillsmen. He was outside British domains. The people did not value money. What they gloated over was food. Although illiterate and dull, they were able to appreciate how fundamentally useless gold is, after all.

Each day Steppling roamed for hours about the wind-swept mountain passes. He climbed to lofty pinnacles almost as sharp as needles. Sometimes he rambled over a tableland of rock so vast that the greatest giants of legend might have sat down comfortably around it without bumping elbows. Not infrequently he even ventured to walk about the native haunts of the city, where sod-thatched huts attested the poverty of the people. But the inhabitants looked at him with hostile glances as he passed. They were not pleased with his manner. They did not like his scrutiny. He, on his part, did not mind their attitude. He had traveled much. He was used to eccentricities. And yet he felt ill at ease.

NE day he walked farther than usual. The city was small and the houses became less frequent, until finally he arrived at the country beyond. Even then he did not stop until he had reached a long, low house, Chinese in style. In the center was a tall pagoda, whose colorful façade was at strange variance with the drab little city through which he had just passed.

Before the doorway of the house sat an old Chinaman. He was so old, shriveled and shrunken, and his face was so crisscrossed with lines that he appeared like a mummy. Age seemed to have turned him to stone. He sat without blinking. His parchmentlike face was as brown as tanned leather. On his chin was a wisp of beard which eddied fantastically about in the sun. His lips were compressed into a thin line. His eyes looked dully out from beneath half-closed lids. His slant brows would have made his face distinctive even if it had not been distinctive otherwise. He was completely wrapped in a great cloak of alluring color. It was blue, like the midnight sky; yet sometimes, as the light struck it, it seemed to flame green. On his head was a square hat, small and black, like a great black ebony domino.

The old man sat and gazed before him. He seemed to be peering into the future, an old prognosticator crouching before his house. John Steppling stood and stared at the ancient figure. The Chinaman was so small that he resembled a child, a very old child with a wisp of beard.

Steppling was curious. Who was this ancient stranger, this man so different from all the other