he answered."

Walker stopped, then he added:

"It's a thing which I did not know until that moment, but it's the
truth. If hard-packed earth is dug up and repacked air gets into it, and
if one pours water on the place air bubbles will come up."

He did not go on, and I flung the big query of his story at him.

"And you found the plates there?"

"Yes," he replied, "in the false bottom of an old steamer trunk."

"And the hobo got the money?"

"Certainly," he answered. "I put it into his hand, and let him go with
it, as I promised."

Again he was silent, and I turned toward him in astonishment.

"Then," I said, "why did you begin this story by saying the hobo faked
you? I don't see the fake; he found the plates and he was entitled to
the reward."

Walker put his hand into his pocket, took out a leather case, selected a
paper from among its contents and handed it to me. "I didn't see the
fake either," he said, "until I got this letter."

I unfolded the letter carefully. It was neatly written in a hand like
copper plate and dated from Buenos Aires:

_Dear Colonel Walker_: When I discovered that you were planting an agent
on every ship I had to abandon the plates and try for the reward. Thank
you for the five thousand; it covered expenses. Very sincerely yours,

D. MULEHAUS.

THE BLOOD OF THE DRAGON

BY THOMAS GRANT SPRINGER

From _Live Stories_

Kan Wong, the sampan boatman, sat in the bow of his tiny craft, looking
with dream-misted eyes upon the oily, yellow flood of the Yangtze River.
Far across on the opposite shore, blurred by the mist that the alchemy
of the setting sun transmuted from miasmic vapour to a veil of gold,
rose the purple-shadowed, stone-tumbled ruins of Hang Gow, ruins that
had been a proud, walled city in the days before the Tai-ping Rebellion.

Viewing its slowly dimming powers as they sank into the fading gold of
the mist that the coming night thickened and darkened as it wiped out
the light with a damp hand, Kan Wong dreamed over the stories that his
father's father--now revered dust somewhere off toward the hills that
dimly met the melting sky line--had told him of that ruined city,
wherein he, Kan Wong, had not Fate made men mad, would now be ruling a
lordly household, even wearing the peacock feather and embroidered
jacket that were his by right of the Dragon's blood, that blood now
hidden under the sun-browned skin of a river coolie. Kan Wong stuffed
fine-cut into h