ompete for the next degree, where
success would bring him higher honour and a slightly less meagre
competence. In the meanwhile he married Hoa-mi, being able to display
thirty-seven taels and nearly five hundred cash towards that end.
Ultimately he rose to a position of remunerative ease, but it is
understood that he attained this more by a habit of acting as the
necessities of the moment required than by his literary achievements.

Over the door of his country residence in the days of his profusion he
caused the image of a luminous insect to be depicted, and he engraved
its semblance on his seal. He would also have added the presentment of
a water-buffalo, but Hoa-mi deemed this inexpedient.

CHAPTER VI

The High-minded Strategy of the Amiable Hwa-mei

Warned by the mischance attending his previous meeting with Hwa-mei,
Kai Lung sought the walled enclosure at the earliest moment of his
permitted freedom, and secreting himself among the interlacing growth
he anxiously awaited the maiden's coming.

Presently a movement in the trees without betrayed a presence, and the
story-teller was on the point of disclosing himself at the shutter
when the approaching one displayed an unfamiliar outline. Instead of a
maiden of exceptional symmetry and peach-like charm an elderly and
deformed hag drew near. As she might be hostile to his cause, Kai Lung
deemed it prudent to remain concealed; but in case she should prove to
be an emissary from Hwa-mei seeking him, his purpose was to stand
revealed. To combine these two attitudes until she should declare
herself was by no means an easy task, but she looked neither near nor
far in scrutiny until she stood, mumbling and infirm, beneath the
shutter.

"It is well, minstrel," she called aloud. "She whom you await bid me
greet you with a sign." At Kai Lung's feet there fell a crimson
flower, growing on a thorny stem. "What word shall I in turn bear
back? Speak freely, for her mind is as my open hand."

"Tell me rather," said Kai Lung, looking out, "how she fares and what
averts her footsteps?"

"That will appear in due time," replied the aged one. "In the
meanwhile I have her message to declare. Three times foiled in his
malignant scheme the now obscene Ming-shu sets all the Axioms at
naught. Distrusting you and those about your path, it is his sinister
intention to call up for judgment Kai-moo, who lies within the
women's cell beyond the