long sleep, and he
was hungry. Relieved and overjoyed, Mrs. Barrett ministered to him. When
he had eaten and drunk, she helped him from the table to the stool, and
thence to his feet. Her arm about him, she led him to the door. Fong Wu
had felt his pulse and it had ticked back the desired message, so he was
going home.

"Each night you are to come," Fong Wu said, as he bade them good-by.
"And soon, very soon, you may go from here to the place from which you
came."

Mrs. Barrett turned at the door. A plea for pardon in misjudging him,
thankfulness for his help, sympathy for his exile--all these shone from
her eyes. But words failed her. She held out her hand.

He seemed not to see it; he kept his arms at his sides. A "dog of a
Chinaman" had best not take a woman's hand.

She went out, guiding her husband's footsteps, and helped him climb upon
the mustang from the height of the narrow porch. Then, taking the horse
by the bridle, she moved away down the slope to the road.

Fong Wu did not follow, but closed the door gently and went back to the
ironing-table. A handkerchief lay beside it--a dainty linen square that
she had left. He picked it up and held it before him by two corners.
From it there wafted a faint, sweet breath.

Fong Wu let it flutter to the floor. "The perfume of a plum petal," he
said softly, in English; "the perfume of a plum petal."

THE JUDGMENT OF MAN

BY

JAMES HOPPER

_Copyright_, 1906, by McClure, Phillips and Company

Reprinted from _Caybigan_ by permission

WE WERE sitting around the big center table in the _sala_ of the "House
of Guests" in Ilo-Ilo. We were teachers from Occidental Negros. It was
near Christmas; we had left our stations for the holidays--the cholera
had just swept them and the aftermath was not pleasant to
contemplate--and so we were leaning over the polished _narra_ table,
sipping a sweet, false Spanish wine from which we drew, not a convivial
spirit, but rather a quiet, reflective gloom. All the shell shutters
were drawn back; we could see the tin-roofed city gleam and crackle with
the heat, and beyond the lithe line of cocoanuts, the iridescent sea,
tugging the heart with offer of coolness. But, all of us, we knew the
promise to be Fake, monumental Fake, knew the alluring depths to be hot
as corruption, and full of sharks.

Somebody in a monotonous voice was cataloguing the dead, enumerating
those of us who had been conquered by the climate, by the work