ped in
upon me at breakfast, and took occasion to bewail his own ill fortune,
as his hens had lately stopped laying, or wandered off in the bush. Wan
Lee, who was present during our colloquy, preserved his characteristic
sad taciturnity. When my neighbor had gone, he turned to me with a
slight chuckle: "Flostel's hens--Wan Lee's hens allee same!" His
other offence was more serious and ambitious. It was a season of great
irregularities in the mails, and Wan Lee had heard me deplore the delay
in the delivery of my letters and newspapers. On arriving at my office
one day, I was amazed to find my table covered with letters, evidently
just from the post-office, but, unfortunately, not one addressed to me.
I turned to Wan Lee, who was surveying them with a calm satisfaction,
and demanded an explanation. To my horror he pointed to an empty
mail-bag in the corner, and said, "Postman he say, 'No lettee, John; no
lettee, John.' Postman plentee lie! Postman no good. Me catchee lettee
last night allee same!" Luckily it was still early: the mails had not
been distributed. I had a hurried interview with the postmaster; and
Wan Lee's bold attempt at robbing the United States mail was finally
condoned by the purchase of a new mail-bag, and the whole affair thus
kept a secret.

If my liking for my little Pagan page had not been sufficient, my duty
to Hop Sing was enough, to cause me to take Wan Lee with me when I
returned to San Francisco after my two years' experience with "The
Northern Star." I do not think he contemplated the change with pleasure.
I attributed his feelings to a nervous dread of crowded public streets
(when he had to go across town for me on an errand, he always made a
circuit of the outskirts), to his dislike for the discipline of the
Chinese and English school to which I proposed to send him, to his
fondness for the free, vagrant life of the mines, to sheer wilfulness.
That it might have been a superstitious premonition did not occur to me
until long after.

Nevertheless it really seemed as if the opportunity I had long looked
for and confidently expected had come,--the opportunity of placing Wan
Lee under gently restraining influences, of subjecting him to a life and
experience that would draw out of him what good my superficial care and
ill-regulated kindness could not reach. Wan Lee was placed at the school
of a Chinese missionary,--an intelligent and kind-hearted clergyman,
who had shown great interest in the