ate. He has
dreamed a dream three times, and its meaning is beyond the skill of
any man to solve. Yet how shall this avail you who are no geomancer?"

"What is the nature of the dream?" inquired Kai Lung. "For remember,
'Though Shen-fi has but one gate, many roads lead to it.'"

"The substance of the dream is this: that herein he who sleeps walks
freely in the ways of men wearing no robe or covering of any kind, yet
suffering no concern or indignity therefrom; that the secret and
hidden things of the earth are revealed to his seeing eyes; and that
he can float in space and project himself upon the air at will. These
three things are alien to his nature, and being three times repeated,
the uncertainty assails his ease."

"Let it, under your persistent care, assail him more and that
unceasingly," exclaimed Kai Lung, with renewed lightness in his voice.
"Breathe on the surface of his self-repose as a summer breeze moves
the smooth water of a mountain lake--not deeply, but never quite at
rest. Be assured: it is no longer possible to doubt that powerful
Beings are interested in our cause."

"I go, oppressed one," replied Hwa-mei. "May this period of your
ignoble trial be brought to a distinguished close."

On the following day at the appointed hour Cho-kow was led before the
Mandarin Shan Tien, and the nature of his crimes having been explained
to him by the contemptible Ming-shu, he was bidden to implicate Kai
Lung and thus come to an earlier and less painful end.

"All-powerful," he replied, addressing himself to the Mandarin, "the
words that have been spoken are bent to a deceptive end. They of our
community are a simple race and doubtless in the past their ways were
thus and thus. But, as it is truly said, 'Tian went bare, his eyes
could pierce the earth and his body float in space, but they of his
seed do but dream the dream.' We, being but the puny descendants--"

"You have spoken of one Tian whose attributes were such, and of those
who dream thereof," interrupted the Mandarin, as one who performs a
reluctant duty. "That which you adduce to uphold your cause must bear
the full light of day."

"Alas, omnipotence," replied Cho-kow, "this concerns the doing of the
gods and those who share their line. Now I am but an ill-conditioned
outcast from the obscure land of Khim, and possess no lore beyond what
happens there. Haply the gods that rule in Khim have a different
manner of behaving from those in the Upper Air a