Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 2 (1925-08).djvu/77

 as the path down which we walk. What good is the path without the light of a lantern to show us the way? Have you time for me to tell you a story? It matters little in any case. You must stay. Nothing could be of vaster importance. Listen then to my story."

He drew me into his shop and motioned me to be seated upon a rude bench at a table, a table piled high with lanterns, and he took up a position on the farther side.

," he began, "are like opium. They can be a force of good, or conveyers of frightful evil. One should indeed be careful in selecting a lantern. For a lantern lights one's path, and sometimes the path is of the lantern's choosing."

He drew his hand across his eyes as though striving to bring the pictures of memory out in sharper detail.

"You must know," he continued presently, "that for thousands of years the family of Wen have been lantern-makers. It is a great art that has been transmitted from father to son for ages. The making of lanterns is not merely artizan work. Great lanterns are not turned out as though they were stamped from a machine in a mill. There is much of mystery and romance in their manufacture. Some I will tell you, but more is a closed book, a locked book of which only those who are of the family of Yin have the key. The original lantern-makers were men of great prominence. Through the dark channels and streams of old China they sent their bright and cheerful lanterns, like great fireflies darting about in a garden. It was as though additional moons had been given to China by the illustrious family of Yin.

"With all the great spirits of the earth and sky and also within the waters of the sea my family was in great favor. Even the dragons and serpents which lie beneath the great grim mountains of West China never even thought of harming us. We were people greater than other people. We were creators of light and beauty; and as a token of respect and appreciation it has been for centuries the custom of the Great Spirits which guide the universe to pour forth blessings on the family of Yin.

"I was no exception. To me they gave a girl more marvelous than any maiden born before in all of China. She was my very own, more precious even than my lanterns, and lanterns are more precious than pearls. Her name was Taki. She was born one night when the moon was at the full. It looked that night as though it were a lantern and she gazed at it and made faint sounds as though in adoration. It was a prophecy. Sixteen years later she chanced to pass my shop and paused. She uttered a little cry of joy as she gazed at the lanterns, just as at birth she had gurgled joyfully at the moon. That pause was the turning point in both our lives. It marked the beginning of an epic of happiness such as all the flowery poets of the East would be powerless to tell of. Love, they say, is unknown in China. But what they say does not agree with facts, for love took root in my heart and flamed more brightly than any of my lanterns, and I was fortunate in kindling an answering flame in hers.

"Then followed a period of my life fraught with dreams and romance and soft-tinted lights. It was an existence to dream of, not to tell. This girl of peerless beauty was my very own. If you have the slightest imagination you can conjure up what that meant to me. We planned our marriage with as much enthusiasm as though we were not chained down by all the rusted traditions of old China. But fortunately a thing that is rusty is easily broken. It was not necessary for me to secure the consent of her