ors of the fourth, third, second and
first degrees. Then there are the city governors, the district
prefects, the provincial rulers, the Imperial Assessors, the Board of
Censors, the Guider of the Vermilion Pencil, and, finally, the supreme
Emperor himself. To each of these, if you are wealthy enough to reach
his actual presence, you may prostrate yourself in turn, and each one,
with many courteous expressions of intolerable regret that the matter
does not come within his office, will refer you to another. The more
prudent course, therefore, would seem to be that of beginning with the
Emperor rather than reaching him as the last resort, and as you are
now without means of livelihood if you remain here there is no reason
why you should not journey to the Capital and make the attempt."

"The Highest!" exclaimed Ten-teh, with a pang of unfathomable emotion.
"Is there, then, no middle way? Who is Ten-teh, the obscure and
illiterate fisherman, that he should thrust himself into the presence
of the Son of Heaven? If the mother of the dutiful Chou Yii could
destroy herself and her family at one blow to the end that her son
might serve his sovereign with a single heart, how degraded an outcast
must he be who would obtrude his own trivial misfortunes at so
critical a time."

"'A thorn in one's own little finger is more difficult to endure than
a sword piercing the sublime Emperor's arm,'" replied the headman,
resuming his occupation. "But if your angle of regarding the various
obligations is as you have stated it, then there is obviously nothing
more to be said. In any case it is more than doubtful whether the
Fountain of Justice would raise an eyelash if you, by every
combination of fortunate circumstance, succeeded in reaching his
presence."

"The headman has spoken, and his word is ten times more weighty than
that of an ill-educated fisherman," replied Ten-teh submissively, and
he departed.

From that time Ten-teh sought to sustain life upon roots and wild
herbs which he collected laboriously and not always in sufficient
quantities from the woods and rank wastes around. Soon even this
resource failed him in a great measure, for a famine of unprecedented
harshness swept over that part of the province. All supplies of
adequate food ceased, and those who survived were driven by the pangs
of hunger to consume weeds and the bark of trees, fallen leaves,
insects of the lowest orders and the bones of wild animals which had
die