solution of the mystery.

The story that really lay behind this strange inscription was after all
a most romantic and a most pathetic one.

Many years before, in a village beyond the hills skirting the plain on
which the city was built, there lived a family of three; that is to
say, a man and his wife and their little son. It was a supremely happy
home. The husband and wife were devotedly attached to each other, and
the ambition of every family amongst the four hundred millions of China
had been granted them; for they had a son, who in the future would
perpetuate the father's name, and present at his grave sacrificial
offerings which would reach him in the Land of Shadows and keep him
from starvation there.

The one great sorrow of the home was its poverty. There was no
question but that they were exceedingly poor; and every morning, as the
dawn broke upon them, they felt that they stood close up to the line
beyond which lay hunger and even starvation.

But China is full of homes in such a situation. In this respect,
indeed, the country is a land of heroes and heroines, for with vast
masses of the people it is a daily struggle for food. Millions
scattered throughout the Empire never or very rarely get enough to eat,
and yet with splendid and pathetic patience they set themselves to
suffer and to die, sternly and uncomplainingly, as becomes an Imperial
race such as the Chinese are.

All that this particular family had to live upon were a few diminutive
fields, which under the most favourable circumstances could produce
barely enough sweet potatoes to keep body and soul together, and a
scanty supply of vegetables with which to season them. If the rains
failed and the potato vines were parched and blasted in their ridges by
the great red-hot sun, then the husband had to look out for some other
means of earning enough money to provide the bare necessaries of life
for his little home.

Sometimes he would engage himself as a porter to carry the produce of
the larger farmers to the great market-town which lay ten miles
distant; but even then he could earn only just enough to provide the
most meagre fare for his family for a week or two at the very most.

At other times he would secure better-paid employment by carrying a
sedan-chair to some distant place, which would take him from home for
several days at a time. He would return, it is true, with some goodly
strings of cash, which would make his wife's eyes glea