of the infliction of his presence. "Have we
not disbursed in one day to the piratical Ho thrice the sum which we
had set by to serve its purpose for a hand-count of moons; and do we
possess the Great Secret?" they cried. "Nevertheless, dispose your
engaging band of mendicants about the place freely until it suits your
refined convenience to proceed elsewhere, O meritorious Yuen Yan, for
your unassuming qualities have won our consistent regard; but an
insatiable sponge has already been laid upon the well-spring of our
benevolence and the tenacity of our closed hand is inflexible."

Even the passive mendicants began to murmur against his leadership,
urging him that he should adopt some of the simpler methods of the
gifted Ho and thereby save them all from an otherwise inevitable
starvation. The Emperor Kai-tsing, said the one who led their voices
(referring in his malignant bitterness to a sovereign of the previous
dynasty), was dead, although the fact had doubtless escaped Yuen Yan's
deliberate perception. The methods of four thousand years ago were
becoming obsolete in the face of a strenuous competition, and unless
Yuen Yan was disposed to assume a more highly-coiled appearance they
must certainly address themselves to another leader.

It was on this occasion that the incident took place which has passed
down in the form of an inspiriting proverb. Yuen Yan had
conscientiously delivered at the door of his abode the last of his
company and was turning his footsteps towards his own arch when he
encountered the contumelious Ho, who was likewise returning at the
close of a day's mendicancy--but with this distinction: that, whereas
Ho was followed by two stalwart attendants carrying between them a
sack full of money, Yan's share of his band's enterprise consisted
solely of one base coin of a kind which the charitable set aside for
bestowing upon the blind and quite useless for all ordinary purposes
of exchange. A few paces farther on Yan reached the Temple of the
Unseen Forces and paused for a moment, as his custom was, to cast his
eyes up to the tablets engraved with The Virtues, before which some
devout person nightly hung a lantern. Goaded by a sudden impulse, Yan
looked each way about the deserted street, and perceiving that he was
alone he deliberately extended his out-thrust tongue towards the
inspired precepts. Then taking from an inner sleeve the base coin he
flung it at the inscribed characters and observed with sa