vince. The young King was delighted, and forgot his warring,
passing all his days within the women's quarters.

As the winter waned and the spring came, the slave-girl sickened,
said she panted for the hillsides, and she pointed to the mountain
outside his city walls. He was a foolish King, and he builded for her a
palace, and she moved there with her women. The King was lonely in
the city, and he passed his days with the women in the palace on the
mountain. While living there in pleasure, and his army in the city, the
old King of Hangchow sent his soldiers; and soon there was no King
of Soochow, only a slave-girl decked with many jewels was taken
back with honour to the old King's city.

I read all this to thine Honourable Mother, and told her we could see
the ruins of the fish-pond, of the palace, see the fallen marbles from
the tea-house, and-- the chairs were ordered, and we went. We
wandered over deserted pathways, saw the lotus pools once filled with
goldfish, picked our way through lonely courtyards, climbed the
sunken steps of terraces that had once been gay with flowers. It all
was melancholy, this palace built for pleasure, now a mass of
crumbling ruins, and it saddened us. We sat upon the King's bench
that overlooked the plain, and from it I pointed out the Fir-tree
Monastery in the distance. I spoke of their famous tea, sun-dried with
the flowers of jessamine, and said it might bring cheer and take away
the gloom caused by the sight of death and vanished grandeurs now
around us.

We were carried swiftly along the pathways that wound in and out
past farm villages and rest-houses until we came to the monastery,
which is like a yellow jewel in its setting of green fir-trees. The priests
made us most welcome, and we drank of their tea, which has not
been overpraised, sitting at a great open window looking down upon
the valley. Strolling in the courtyard was Chih-peh with his three
friends. Mah-li never raised her eyes; she sat as maidens sit in public,
but-- she saw.

We came home another pathway, to pass the resting-place of
Sheng-dong, the man who at the time of famine fed the poor and gave
his all to help the needy. The Gods so loved him that when his body
was carried along the road-way to the Resting-place of his Ancestors,
all the stones stood up to pay him reverence. One can see them now,
standing straight and stiff, as if waiting for his command to lie down
again.

Art thou dissatisfied with me? Ha