stroke
of the wooden boom has subsided. Vibrant with authority, it was such a
voice as men obey, however much they may hate its owner. He repeated
the question in Mandarin, and again Peter indicated that that was not
his speech.

A different voice, yet quite as impelling as the other, caused Peter to
look up sharply. The mandarin smiled wisely, but not unkindly.

"The darkness deceived me," he said in English of a strange cast. "I
mistook you for a beggar. You are far from the river, my friend. The
bones of your steamer lie fathoms deep by now. Why are you so far from
Ching-Fu? You were stunned, perhaps?"

"I am only hungry," said Peter boldly. "My way lies into India. There
I have friends."

The mandarin studied him dubiously, and clapped his hands, the great
diamond cutting an oval of many colors. Coolies were given up by the
night, and ran to obey his guttural, musical commands. They returned
with steaming bowls of rice and meat, and a narrow lacquer table.

"Come and sit beside me. Your feet must be sore--bleeding. You may
call me Chang. So I am known to my British friends on the frontier. I
have been ill, a mountain fever, perhaps. In Ching-Fu. I had expected
medicine on the river steamer."

He snapped his fingers, and whispered to a coolie whose face was gaunt
and stolid in the flickering red glow of the fire.

So while Peter consumed the rice and stew, his bruised feet were bathed
in warm water, rubbed with a soothing ointment, and wrapped in a downy
bandage.

A blue liquor served in cups of shell silver completed the meal. The
aromatic syrup, which exhaled a perfume that was indescribably
oriental, sent an exhilarating fire through his veins. It seemed to
clarify his thoughts and vision, to oil his aching joints, and remove
their pain.

From the corner of his eye he detected the silken folds of the
mandarin's lofty tent, in the murky interior of which a fat, yellow
candle sputtered and dripped. When his eyes came back to the table,
the bowls and cups had been removed, and in their place was a
chess-board inlaid with ivory and pearl.

Inspired by the cordial, and the queerness of this setting, Peter felt
that he was the central figure of a dream. The pungent odor of remote
incense, the distant tinkling of a bell, the stamping and pawing of the
mules and the brooding figure in silk and gold at his side, took him
back across the ages to the days and nights of Scheherezade.

And