of the ancient bronze, following them
slowly with a yellow and clawlike forefinger.

"Can you read what is written there?" inquired the Reverend Mr.
Carew.

"Yes, brother. This is what is written: 'I am Erlik, Ruler of Chaos
and of All that Was. The old order passes when I arrive. I bring
confusion among the peoples; I hurl down emperors; kingdoms crumble
where I pass; the world begins to rock and tip, spilling nations into
outer darkness. When there are no more kingdoms and no more kings; no
more empires and no emperors; and when only the humble till, the
blameless sow, the pure reap; and when only the teachers teach in the
shadow of the Tree, and when the Thinker sits unstirring under the
high stars, then, from the dark edges of the world I let go my grasp
and drop into those immeasurable deeps from which I came--I, Erlik,
Ruler of All that Was.'"

After a silence the Reverend Mr. Carew asked whether the figure was a
very old one.

"It is before the period called 'Han'--a dynasty during which the
Mongols were a mighty people. This inscription is Mongol. Erlik was
the Yellow Devil of the Mongols."

"Not a heathen god, then?"

"No, a heathen devil. Their Prince of Darkness."

Ruhannah, pencil in hand, looked curiously at this heathen Prince of
Darkness, arrived out of the dark ages to sit to her for his scowling
portrait.

"I wonder what he thinks of America," she said, partly to herself.

The native missionary smiled, picked up the Yellow Devil, shook the
figure, listening.

"There is something inside," he said; "perhaps jewels. If you drilled
a hole in him you could find out."

The Reverend Mr. Carew nodded absently:

"Yes; it might be worth while," he said.

"If there is a jewel," repeated the missionary, "you had better take
it, then cast away the figure. Erlik brings disaster to the land where
his image is set up."

The Reverend Mr. Carew smiled at his Chinese and Christian confrere's
ineradicable vein of superstition.

CHAPTER IV

THE TRODDEN WAY

There came the indeterminate year when Ruhannah finished school and
there was no money available to send her elsewhere for further
embellishment, no farther horizon than the sky over the Gayfield
hills, no other perspective than the main street of Gayfield with the
knitting mill at the end of it.

So into Gayfield Mill the girl walked, and found a place immediately
among the unskilled. And her career appeared to be predetermined now,
a