ertain tests that all doubtful
influences had been driven off and that truth and impartiality alone
remained.

"Except on the part of the prisoners, doubtless," remarked the
Mandarin, thereby imperilling the gravity of all who stood around.

"The first of those to prostrate themselves before your enlightened
clemency, Excellence, is a notorious assassin who, under another name,
has committed many crimes," began the execrable Ming-shu. "He
confesses that, now calling himself Kai Lung, he has recently
journeyed from Loo-chow, where treason ever wears a smiling face."

"Perchance he is saddened by our city's loyalty," interposed the
benign Shan Tien, "for if he is smiling now it is on the side of his
face removed from this one's gaze."

"The other side of his face is assuredly where he will be made to
smile ere long," acquiesced Ming-shu, not altogether to his chief's
approval, as the analogy was already his. "Furthermore, he has been
detected lurking in secret meeting-places by the wayside, and on
reaching Yu-ping he raised his rebellious voice inviting all to gather
round and join his unlawful band. The usual remedy in such cases
during periods of stress, Excellence, is strangulation."

"The times are indeed pressing," remarked the agile-minded Mandarin,
"and the penalty would appear to be adequate." As no one suffered
inconvenience at his attitude, however, Shan Tien's expression assumed
a more unbending cast.

"Let the witnesses appear," he commanded sharply.

"In so clear a case it has not been thought necessary to incur the
expense of hiring the usual witnesses," urged Ming-shu; "but they are
doubtless clustered about the opium floor and will, if necessary,
testify to whatever is required."

"The argument is a timely one," admitted the Mandarin. "As the result
cannot fail to be the same in either case, perhaps the accommodating
prisoner will assist the ends of justice by making a full confession
of his crimes?"

"High Excellence," replied the story-teller, speaking for the first
time, "it is truly said that that which would appear as a mountain in
the evening may stand revealed as a mud-hut by the light of day. Hear
my unpainted word. I am of the abject House of Kai and my inoffensive
rice is earned as a narrator of imagined tales. Unrolling my
threadbare mat at the middle hour of yesterday, I had raised my
distressing voice and announced an intention to relate the Story of
Wong Ts'in, that which is known