w what it means?"

"I do," Alice answered; "it's the girl from whom he was separated nearly
twenty years ago."

"Why--that's funny," said Francisco. "Yesterday a woman by that name was
captured by the mission-workers in a raid on Chinatown. I wonder....
Could it be the same one?"

"Not likely," the physician answered. "It's a common name, I think.
Still--" he looked at Po Lun.

"Run and get her," Alice urged. "It's a chance. Go quickly."

Half an hour passed; an hour, while the watchers waited at the bedside
of Po Lun. Gradually his respiration waned. Several times the nurse
called the physician, thinking death had come. But a spark still
lingered, growing fainter with the minutes till a mist upon a mirror was
the only sign that breath remained.

Suddenly there was a rush of feet, a door flung open and Francisco
entered, half dragging a Chinese woman by the arm. She gazed with
frantic eyes from Alice to Robert till her glance took in the figure on
the bed. She stared at it curiously, incredulously. Then she gave a
little cry and flung herself toward Po Lun.

What she said no one there present knew. What strange cabal she invoked
is still a mystery. Be that as it may, eyes which had seemed closed
forever, opened. Lips white, bloodless, breathed a scarce-heard whisper.

"_Hang Far_!"

"Come," said Alice. "Let us leave them together."

Half an later, in an ante-room, the doctor told them: "He will live, I
think. It's very like a miracle...."

* * * * *

At the foot of Brannan street lay the Pacific Mail docks, where the
Chinese laborers were landed. Many thousands of them had been brought
there by the steamers from Canton. They had solved vexed problems as
house servants, fruit pickers, tillers of the soil; they had done the
rough work in the building of many bridges, the stemming of turbulent
streams, the construction of highways. And while there was work for all,
they had caused little trouble.

Now half a thousand jobless workers, armed and reckless, marched toward
the docks. They bore torches, which illuminated fitfully their flushed,
impassioned faces. Here and there one carried a transparency described,
"The Chinese Must Go."

[Illustration: Half a thousand jobless workers, armed and reckless,
marched toward the docks. They bore torches.... "A hell-bent crew'"
said Ellis.]

Chief Ellis and a squad of mounted policemen watched them as they
marched down Second street,