waste of money, and, if he kept a stick burning very slowly, the Joss
wouldn't know the difference. So now we've got the sticks mixed with
a lot of glue, and they take half-an-hour longer to burn, and smell
stinky. Let alone the smell of the room by itself. No business can get
on if they try that sort of thing. The Joss doesn't like it. I can see
that. Late at night, sometimes, he turns all sorts of queer colors--blue
and green and red--just as he used to do when old Fung-Tching was alive;
and he rolls his eyes and stamps his feet like a devil.

I don't know why I don't leave the place and smoke quietly in a little
room of my own in the bazar. Most like, Tsin-ling would kill me if
I went away--he draws my sixty rupees now--and besides, it's so much
trouble, and I've grown to be very fond of the Gate. It's not much to
look at. Not what it was in the old man's time, but I couldn't leave it.
I've seen so many come in and out. And I've seen so many die here on the
mats that I should be afraid of dying in the open now. I've seen some
things that people would call strange enough; but nothing is strange
when you're on the Black Smoke, except the Black Smoke. And if it was,
it wouldn't matter. Fung-Tching used to be very particular about his
people, and never got in any one who'd give trouble by dying messy and
such. But the nephew isn't half so careful. He tells everywhere that he
keeps a "first-chop" house. Never tries to get men in quietly, and make
them comfortable like Fung-Tching did. That's why the Gate is getting a
little bit more known than it used to be. Among the niggers of course.
The nephew daren't get a white, or, for matter of that, a mixed skin
into the place. He has to keep us three of course--me and the Memsahib
and the other Eurasian. We're fixtures. But he wouldn't give us credit
for a pipeful--not for anything.

One of these days, I hope, I shall die in the Gate. The Persian and
the Madras man are terrible shaky now. They've got a boy to light their
pipes for them. I always do that myself. Most like, I shall see them
carried out before me. I don't think I shall ever outlive the Memsahib
or Tsin-ling. Women last longer than men at the Black-Smoke, and
Tsin-ling has a deal of the old man's blood in him, though he DOES smoke
cheap stuff. The bazar-woman knew when she was going two days before her
time; and SHE died on a clean mat with a nicely wadded pillow, and the
old man hung up her pipe just above the Jo