CHAPTER I.

Feilding Star, Volume I, Issue 281, 1 June 1907, Page 2 (Supplement)

CHAPTER I.

By chance, within the gates of a Japanese temple, a sadden shower caught Owen Scarlett idling, and drove him into the nearest shelter, which happened to be a tiny, dark . aquarium. There, lounging pleasantly, listening to the ram-drops on the roof, watching the purple and golden fish steer through cool babbles green as jade, he found himself near a group of three women in the dusk. Europeans, therefore tourists, he thought. He was about to pass on, when by chance he saw one of the sponges suddenly open like a ragged umbrella of pink flesh, slide along the | glass with tentacles writhing, and | stare with an evil black eye set in a pulpy face. The women squealed, and the nearest turned instinctively to Owen. "Horrible!" she cried. "Ugh}" They both made the same face of disgust, and then, in a comic impulse of relief, smiled at each other. Even in the green light from the tank she < was a pretty girl. Her eyes shone | blue and friendly, her face bright j with the candor of youth. In a ; flash, however, she had bethought herself and turned away. "It's a devil-fish, Aunty," she said with composure. "Do come and see something pleasant." And she .' led away her two elder companions, j That was all, but for months after- > wards, when hard work had crushed j out the memory of his brief holiday < in Japan, in odd moments of a | Chinese winter, he remembered the ! incident, and in imagination saw toe -, giri'B clear and merry eyes. A trifle j to recall ; yet it was a vague comfort • to a solitary white man lost in # the I flux and flow of the yellow myriads. < Once, in Hongkong, half-way through a letter to hie uncle's firm, he looked up from the typewriter, stared j aoross the harbour turmoil of junks and launches to the brick-red hills be- , yond Kowloon, and said: j "I'll bet her aunts were from New . England." x ' Again by chance: on a steamer bound for Saigon, as he stopped out : of his bath, a roll threw him plump against a burly man in a green silk j kimono. ... , , i "Hello!— No harm done!" boomed a cheerful bass. The man was a broad six-footer, with a short, vigorous, grizzled beard parted down the middle, and, under jutting brows, a pair of deep-set eyes that shone with a changeable light. His air was that of some robust, good-hum-oured Tai-pan. "All right P" he: laughed; and the tail of his green ' bedragoned silk whisked into the next ; compartment, from which soon issued ' a general roar: "OBoy! My no towel ■ I have-got! Catchee mai-wum! Fai- j di!" t J . ! On the evening of the same day, in , the dining-room, a German antiquary going to Angkor looked up from his solitaire, canght Scarlett's eye across the table, and said guardedly: > lc You are not a fnendt to der larch ; man in der comer smoking, and who j now bass gone top-side, nor' His glance took in the retreating figure of the man with the trimly parted , beard. "No," said Scarlett. "Dot iss goot," the German nodded i heavily- "It iss Borkman, der < biggest scountrel in der Oryent. For cantos, frattdts, and allerlei badt "business, sober or dronk, iss he der vorst." The antiquary leaned back and told a hideous story in detail. "Borkman— he escabed with loot. Der ! efil-men broaber — immer so — Achf . ! . . But he wass kicked out yet ; once, in * clubp off Nebu. Gootness me. yeas." he concluded. Again by chance, it was late March when Scarlett opened and joyfully read a letter from his uncle's firm whioh, ending his long exile on the China seaboard, recalled him to take charge of their Oriental department, and gave him till September to wind up bis affairs and reach the home office. "Must have made good, more or less," thought Owen happily. "Now, which way home? Pacific or Suez? Toss for it," he decided. "Heads Nagasaki, toils Singapore." And Fortune, once more pouncing down into the game, rang the Mexican dollar upon the table tails up. On an April evening in Singapore he had gone to a ball at the Tanglin Club. Tired of the crowding couples , the lights, the music, the labor of this clammy pastime, Owen was heading for the card-tables when s friend seized and bore him back: "No, you don'tH-come along—present you— compatriot of yours— Miss Holborow tf , , Among the pale and jaded residents ahe ahone out a braeay, tanned I seafarer. "Why. you're the devil-fish girl!" he exclaimed. Their laughter mingled happily. „ "What a horrid name! But it shows a flattering memory," she said. "Still, I knew you across from the doorway, coming in— — • Scarlett replied, in cold and feeble words from a heart aglow. Their faces might have shown now glad they were, and of this the girl was perhaps aware, for on a sudden she made the matter less personal, saying: "It's good to see an American again, isn't it? You live out hero in the East?" . "Not now. thank Heaven," said Owen. "Ship me somewhere west of Sues. I'm tired of it. I'm just going " By a flash of genius he stopped before committing himself. lf l'm just going about on a few errands, to and fro in the world. You're travelling, too, aren't you?" "Yes," replied the girl. "My aunt and I are going back by Suez. Her friend deserted her in China, and we've taken a courier to protect us, and now we're running up to Biam, to Bangkok." "That's oddT isn't it?" he returned brazenly. "I have to go there myself on— a matter. You go by the German mail, I suppose?" "Oh. no. by the Prapatom, on Saturday," she explained. "There'll be a crowd on board, and a 'stupid crowd of foreigners,' I'm afraid." "I can promise not to be a foreigner, at least," he laughed. "The Prapatom happens to be my steaA sfrftight and shining military youth suddenly drew himself up tall before them, and, drawling officially .reported that the dance was his. "I nope to see you on board, then, Mr Scarlett," she called with a smite over her shoulder, as she was caught into the whirl of skipping feet and aad, preoccupied faces. Before the morning had tune to glare Owen had rattled in a darkshattered gharri to the shippingoffice; and two days later, sweltering in the muffled sunlight under the Prapatom's awning, he had the satisfaction of seeing large canvas trunks, marked "L. H.," slung upon the forward deck by the wild-haired Malays. "Backy I didn't ton heads," thought this young adventurer. But he was not of the sort to hurry matters, or plan vulgar stratagems among deck-chairs or places at table. From the upper end of the captain's mess he had the mild pleasure of bowing to Miss Holborow at the tower. She sat, in white, beside a prim little woman in gray. As he stole a look under the frill of the punkah from time to time, he could see the aunt utter a few staid sentences, and the girl reply. Presently, to his surprise, in marched s white-dad giant— Borkman. He chose the chair opposite the two ladies, and bowed with an almost familiar air. They returned the <*bow graciously enough. The captain grunted. He was # a dean, elderly Englishman, with cheeks ruddy from whisky and tropic weather, but fine gray eyes full of honesty. All through dinner he watched the lower end of the table; at hist he beckoned to an alert little withered Chinaman in a pale bin© robe "Ah Fook," said the captain in a j towered voice, barely audible to Soar-

I lett. "You see gentleman down next Number One officer? He eat his chow bottom-side Number Two table breakfast. B'long so. You catchee cards. You savee?" I "Can do," murmured the Celestial • . "Impudent bounder," the captain grumbled. Whatever hopes Owen might have had for that evening were disappointed; for Miss Holborow stayed in the stuffy saloon and played picquet dutifully with her aunt. Walking seven miles round the deck — passing from the mystery of vast moonlit space and a witch-fire ocean of phosphorus astern into the swaying lantern-light amidships— he could see the two women through one porthole, and through the nest, in the little hazy smoking-room the big countenance of Borkman. I "He has cheek enough," thought Scarlett. "I'll bare to ask the captain about him some time." Then came a whole morning of de- [ light. Soon after breakfast he found himself being introduced to the aunt, and presently sitting in a canvas sling chair next Misß Holborow herself. The aunt, a bright-eyed, snare, spinsterlike little matron, gave Owen an odd look, half-friendly, half-sus-picious, which declared: "You seem ? leasable, but one can't be too carenl." All that she said, however, was: "How do you do, Mr Scarltt? My niece has told me of having met you at the Tanglin dance." She spoke as one whose conscience pursues her to the minutest parts of speech. "Your name is very familiar to me: it must be that you have relatives in " And, being satisfied on this point, Mrs Holborow withdrew from the conversation, to become calmly engrossed in a magazine essay on Thoreau, the Man. The girl and the young man, having laboriously dug up common acquaintances, pitched them overboard and began to find out more about each other. "You've chosen lucky weather and a good voyage," ventured Owen. "Travellers don't come up here so often; Bangkok's a quiet place." "That's just it," she rejoined. "I'm tired of being a tourist in a groove; my aunt's tired of places that are not quiet. We have an acquaintance or two up there. And then, she hasn't been happy since we left Japan— doesn't like the Bast very well, I'm afraid. You see, her friend, Mrs Bolton, decided to stay with relatives," the girl explained. "After tiiat, I had trouble persuading my aunt to come on ; but she finally gave in when we found we could take a reliable courier to manage our trunks and plunder and things. He's a jewel, that man! Very, good recommendations, and knows everything! My aunt approves of him, and she's hard to please. — Aunt Julia!" No answer came lrom among the pages. "Let's take a walk," promptly said the girl; and ,lagging somewhat in the drowsy heat, the two started off around the deck. She was very straight, with no seeming effort to poise; walked easily, without slatting her arms or whisking her skirts or thrusting her face forward; and altogether, he thought, had the gait and action of a sensible girl. Several turns they made together, passing the loungers in the deck-chairs : Mrs Holborow still rapt and stimulated, a trim, nervous Englishman rustling the sheets of the "Pink 'Un," whom Owen set down vaguely as the admired courier ; a plump, little brown Japanese smiling tootmully at the dreamy universe; Borkman parting with jewelled fingers his sable-silvered beard, as he listened politely but with mirthful eyes to the earnest talk of a sallow missionary ; and a rich Chinese merchant, who, in a robe of black figured silk, sat reading with grave approval The Swiss Family Robinson. In this company they made the voyage, five lazy, shining days of companionship. No 'marvel of sea or sky appeared to Scarlett as more than Laura's rightful setting. And speech, that to others had been flat and tedious, became to them as simple as the elements, potential as springtime, miraculous as revelation. On the last morning, when the azure Gulf of Siam was lost in the yellow outpour at Koh-*i-chang, and, crossing the bar, the Prapatom had steamed by the after-rail. They were silent, looking back to where, in the liquid light of dawn, the temple of Pak-nam rose from a fairy island, like the tall white helmet of a sunken genie. Slowly the ship moved up a river of molten copper, between low banks of vivid green bush and slim areca palms. From the bosky mouth of a hidden waterway, here and there, sampans stole out — a lithe figure bent forward at the sweep — to break the green reflection with a curved long-bow of ripples. It was the season of the mango showers, and the breeze came heavy with perfume from yellow-bur-geoning acacias. On the lower deck, Chinamen sluiced their sallow bodies with muddy water; soft-eyes Cingalese thrust in their round-combs; Malays knotted their bright sarongs for another day. "All these will be scattering into Siam," said Miss Holborow. "Isn't it fun guessing where people come from and go to, out here? The East is a wonderful kaleidsoscope in that way. I think— always changing, pictures, pictures, appearing, belting . ... Do you know, aometmes I'm a little afraid of it." "I know," said Scarlett, and was silent. Eight years of China had left him little fun in that sort of guessing. At Bangkok all these particular sights would vanish : this girl and her aunt would, like the rest, depart into memories. They would join their friends, he would languish among strangers, and all his valiant, harebrained stratagem would come to nothing. That would never do. "Miss Holborow," he began in a resolute voice. "Please don't be offended." His tone made her look up quickly for an instant; and for that instant he floundered in a new and singular confusion. "You'll think it very odd, and blunt, and — well, I've seen you three times, twice by chance. But for that . . . By George, it won't do to have you go disappearance here in Siam. The world's terrible big; especially the East, where you lose your memory; people and things drop out of sight everywhere, and maskeel — but for friends- — " He stopped, ashamed of this foolish floundering. Meantime she looked at him, so frank and so puzzled that the absurdity of it all overpowered him. "Let me be honest, anyway," he continued, laughing. "I've not the shadow of any kind of business up here. I was heading for Europe, in general, and when you said the other evening that you were coming vp — why ilied and came too-; — - There fell a rather long silence. Below, on the deck, a two-stringed fiddle was wailing, and from behind the ventilator-cowl a singsong voice chanted an endless improvisation. A barefoot China boy pattered past, beating the breakfast gong with a skilful, rubbing stroke. "We've been good friends for a time," said Owen, in conclusion, and then smiled. "It's best not to nave been so on false pretences." The girl searched him through with one bright, incomprehensible look. "I think," she declared slowly, "that you're a very honest, funny — boy. Very funny 1 I&dn't you see, you couldn't dog us round the world in this way?" • "Couldn't I?" he answered stubbornly. "No," said Miss Holborow. "My aunt would never allow it, for one thing." They laughed, and moved away toward breakfast. "If you had not told me all that " she stopped abruptly. "I knew you were very honest when I saw you at the devilfishes." When the ship had anchored in the raotag Me-nam, and the howls of coolies and bumping of sampans announced the hour of disembarking, Scarlett paid his farewell compliments. "And a pleasure for t», too," the little spinsterlike matron averred, as if it had been a vote, not wholly of disapproval. No, many thanks, our man is seeing to our luggage. Goodby. Mr Scarlett." ' Vflood-by," said he, and answered the girl's smile; but it was gloomily that he swung down on the forward deck and picked out hia trunks from the heap.

"I'm an ass," he thought, and gave almost savage directions to the hotel boy. , , , Near by, Borkman of the glowing eyes towered calm above the confusion. In cream-colored pongee, with a diamond buckle on his watch-strap, he surveyed the trunks, choosing among them with a silver-mounted stick of polished stingaree. "Those b'kmg my, eight piecee, catchee that, house, chop-chop!" he commanded, giving the coolie a written card. The stingaree rapped down sharply on the canvas trunks marked "L. H. Scarlett stared m wonder. "I am an ass," he repeated. "Never guessed it, never asked Her - From the bridge rail above, the captain— a purple, sarcastic cherub in the pea-green halo of a gun-hel-met—was forgetting the presence of ladies. «,, » j "Can't you see?" ho roared. "You've fouled the bloody stanchion! You're as nimble as that bird they call the elephant!" CHAPTER 11. Owen let the launch go puffing to the land, bearing with it— * white figure among the bow cushions^— all the good, all the gain of the Orient. He He stood and formed a plan. At the foot of the bridge ladder he found the captain, mollified by the happy effects of epigram, oratory, command, and a stengah with the customs officer. "Good-by, sir; I've had a pleasant voyage," said Scarlett; and when he had shaken hands: *By the way, what's wrong with that fellow Borkman? I meant to ask before " The ruddy little captain rested his gaze upon the spire of a distant wat. as if the secret w«re impaled on the pinnacle. He meditated a space. "His übiquity, for one thing" he aserted, in a voice of slow, tolerant conviction. Then, as his glance came back to the deck, his eyes flashed: "Wrong? Why, the fellow's a rotter! A confounded waster! Shouldn't have allowed him aboard my ship, sir! What do those ladies let him tow around after them for, eh? Biggest bloody raaca! in the East — notorious! Bah " The captain meditated again. "You seem to know them — nice girl, too. Put them 'near,' as you Americans say. He's working some squeeze or other now, mind you " Vague as the testimony was it sufficed for Scarlett. Duty had linked arms with desire, and his heart was fixed. No rotter; not even the mildest waster, should be allowed to guide the Holborows so freely and flagrantly. The sampan that sculled across the brimming race of the Me-nam carried an indignant champion and his luggage. For the next few days Owen went diving hopefully into the dark interiors of wate. Whole afternoons he waited there, an impatient lover blinded with hot illusions, confronting the mystic smile of the' softgleaming Buddhas, who sit aloft, forever peaceful, rapt in the timeless dream of the infinite. In courtyards, seated upon squat Chinese dog-lions, who guard the rolling pearl between their teeth, he passed uncounted Eastern hours, while the breeze rustled the tamarind pods, and set the little golden bells tinkling along the temple cornices. He loitered at the royal stables till the white elephants wearied of saluting him; he stood inanely watching the Siamese nobles fly their star-shaped kites over the Premane ground ; he drove sadly along the empty reaches of the King's boulevard. But he caught no sight of aunt, or guide, or girl. At last he became a known visitor at the counters of shipping-clerks, and between-times a solitary sitter in the hotel garden. He felt silly and desperate: but that ill-sorted trio should not sail down the Me-nam unobserved. . On a hot, lonesome day, as he sat on the little platform which, from the shade of high-arched, breezy afanond trees, looks across the racing copper flood to the teak-mills, he was roused by a heavy step and a cheerful hail; "Oh, there you are, eh?" Borkman, clothed in white, resplendent with gold tioal buttons, sat down and grinned across the white-painted djsk of the little tin table. "Looking for yon all over, Mr Scarlett," he said. "Rum hotel this. I'm staying at a livelier place, though, myself, if you understand me. Go up to their house every morning and report. Good fun! Got a chit here that ought to please you. Where the mischief is the thing?" He fumbled through many pockets, his deep-set eyes Deeming kindly. "Miracle what rubbish a man stows away in his poche! Nice girl that Miss Holborow, eh?" From a pocketbook he dumped a small heap of paper scraps on the table, and began sorting them. Two or three he read, smiling, and tore up: At last, seizing a fresh, white envelope, he pushed the remaining scraps aside. "There's her chit," he said. "No need of your writing. Just reply 'Yes' or 'No' by me. Here s fortune!" "Fortune!" echoed Scarlett, happy and eager. He opened the letter: Dear Mr Scarlett: My aunt and I go with the guide to the ruins at Ayuthia on Thursday morning, and come back by launch in the evening. If you can come, too, we shall be very glad. The Admirable Bearer will bring your answer by word of mouth. I hope you can come. — Yours sincerely, LAURA HOLBOROW. Can't you help us buy a Siamese cat this afternoon? We pick up the A. B. at your hotel, four o'clock. "You'll come?" said Borkman, who seemed to have grasped the situation completely. He gave the young man a benignant smile and the faintest flutter of a wink, at once impudent and paternal. "That's good. The .ladies will be pleased, eh?" He rose "with the air of on& who ends an audience. "Thursday, then? Train at 7.40, you know. Right oh! Goodbye, my boy." And he swaggered off across the clean sand of the little garden. Scarlett was left to discover that this pernicious waster had hobnobbed with him, patronised him, suggested that his dearest secret was an open one, and yet made him uncommonly happy. At least, while he read the note again he could harbor no ill— will. - A puff of cool afternoon breeze sent the forgotten papers flying into the river— all except three bits which fluttered to Scarlett's side of the table. He stopped them mechanically. One was a gharri chit, in marvellous English, from Nawab Shah's livery stable. The second was a chit from Sin Cheong, "Goldsmith or Curio," across which was written in a crabbed, boyish hand, "It is in the middle one. They are following you." "Sounds like melodrama," Owen reflected idly. The third was a pasteboard ticket bearing tiny Japanese characters, a telephone address, the name "KoKatu," and a street- number notorious throughout the Orient. "He's a savory person for a guide," thought the young man with indignation. Had it not been too much work, he would have formed moral reflections on woman's judgment of character. Instead, he puzzled once more over the situation: "A man covered with gold tics and diamond watch-strap buckles is not of the courier type. What's bis game?" Ho found no answer; and Borkman, when he reappeared later, stalking large in the river garden, did not enlighten him. At the same moment wheels rattled in the road, and a victoria drew up at the verandah end, with #Haah of white through the sunny leafage. It was she! It was .also Aunt Julia: from one, a radiant, all-re-warding smile, from the other an indrawn chin and birdlike nod; and Owen found himself perched on a half seat facing them, while Borkman, cracking his whip, led the way nobly in a high tumtum cart with a *V*aler. The ponies scampered along the new road, clattered down a row of Chinee© shops in Cam Peng, and out along the old city wall, where they shied at an elephant plodding to his bath. Scarlett neither marked their course nor knew that they were in Siam; he was with Laura Holborow again, hearing her speak, meeting the glance of those honest eyes where mirth, lived and moved, like swiftness Slaying over depth. After an age of umb sloth h« was restored to life.

"Very interesting, indeed," Aunt Julia Was expounding, "especially to see and study Buddhism at home. • With all their tolerant innovations , they' seem to have kept the j purer J primitive beliefs, such as " "Do look!" cried Laura eagerly. Below the road stretched a canal, empty at ebb-tide; and, in a sampan on the flat waste of filthy ooze, a little Siamese, trousered in a yellow panung. lay supine, pointing a flute skyward! and blowing pastoral notes. Mrs Holborow was naturally some- 11 what acidulated. "This is a very silly expedition that the guide has persuaded you into," she told Laura. 'The cat will be a great nuisance, and I dare say a source of contagion." "Oh," said Scarlett cheerfully, "there's not much plague or cholera here now." "A little would be quite sufficient," replied Aunt Julia stiffly. Presently, their driver swerved after Borkiuan's whiplash round a corner, and pulled up behind the turn-turn in a crowded bazar that reeked of betel, burning joss-sticks, Chinese tobacco, frying lard ana green drainage. Their burly guide, scattering ducks, pariah dogs and black sows, dived under' a monstrous Chinese lantern, and led the party into the dusk and disorder of a pawnshop. On his platform beside a tall glass case of silverware a young Chinaman, naked to the waist, sat braiding pink threads into his queue. He stared at the ladies, and coiled the half-finished straind abont his neck. Borkman presented a hieroglyphic letter, which the pawnbroker read slowly through horn-rimmed spectacles, whispering to himself, and spacing off groups of characters with a long, blue thumb-nail. Meantime the booth was penned in by a chattering crowd, both Tahi and Hainanese, gathered to watch the bargain ; while imps of children, smeared as with yellow ochre and dressed only in heel-bangles or silver fig-leaves, gleefully skipped in pestilential dust. The pawnbroker gravely finished the painted scroll, nodded, grinned, and snarled something over his shoulder. A mysterious scuffle rose in the back shop, and, presently, a neat-bodied little Luk-Cnm woman came clambering over a heap of brasswork, hugging three rebellious cats close to her kerchiefed breast. Poured sprawling upon the platform the cats tried vainly to bolt, then sat ruffled and indignant, darting side-glances of sullen light. "Isn't he a beauty?" cried Miss Holborow. "Careful," Scarlett warned her. "Don't admire. Let me do the bargaining; may I?" "The big* fellow is the only one to buy, sir," Borkman advised. Before the ladies, his manner seemed unnaturally subdued, his genius rebuked. "Don't buy the little ones, Mr Scarlett, that's all. The big chap would fetch fifty to a hundred pounds in London as he stands." "But the two small ones are blue," said Mrs Holborow, forgetting her general objection in a < particular. "And the King has officially declared that blue cats are " "Oh, Aunt Julia," cried the girl reproachfully, "just see the other! He's a dear." The dear uttered a "Yaow!" of unearthly volume, and stared up with the ice-blue eyes of a goblin. He was not of the royal hue, but fawncoloured, with seal-brown face, paws and tail, bat-ears, and bristling moustaches of snow-white. "He heard me!" said Laura. "I must have him." "No enthusiasm." commanded Scarlett. "Let me?' Then, turning to the Chinaman, who sat in a fine oblivion, smoking a Malacca tin pipe like a long-spouted tea-pot: "No teng ha, he said, and pointed to one of the blue cats. "Miv chai gi do?" "Yit ba bat," sang the pawnbroker, with a quick gleam in 'his beady eyes. "M-hai!" Owen laughed in scornful good-humour. "Ngo gin po quai a !" i Negotiations ceased. Scarlett turned airily and surveyed the crowd outside. "What did you tell him?" asked Miss Holborow, amused. "I asked how much can catchee this cat," Owen replied. "He wants 'a hundred tics — absurd: so I told him to lower his price. Don't be impatient." The coolies and the children gaped. One tall Chinaman, who had looked feverishly intent, turned about tactfully to await the renewal of the bargain, presenting an oily brown back. "Hallo," said Owen. "See that, Miss Holborow?" Between the muscular shoulderblades, in Siamese fashion, was tattooed a circular design in blue. "An old friend, isn r t it?" continued Scarlett. "The symbol of Creation — two whales rolled together to form the world — as you see them on the Korean flag, the Madura praus, the Northern Pacific Bailroad, and everywhere. He's not a Hoihow boy." The- pawnbroker suddenly resumed thn chaffering. '•Nil Nil" he cried vehemently, suspending by the scruff of his neck the fawn-coloured cat, who squirmed and clawed like a dragon. "No! ■Maul Gi do?" "M-hai," Scarlett shook his head indifferently. "M-se-ne. No wanfcchee." The Chinaman returned calmly to the blue "miu-chai." And so the bargain tossed and wavered, while the chuckling crowd muttered gibes. At last, Scarlett changed his mongrel speech to English. "Well," he said, "you can buy the big chap for forty ticals. He's an unusually good one — probably stolen. But before you close the bargain I must tell you that it's a risk: they often die going home, they're quarantined in London, and probably not even admitted by our delightful authorities in New York." Laura's face clouded, but Borkman came to the rescue. "It's not so bad as that, sir," he declared cheerfully. "I'll see to him. Get him home for you with no trouble whatever — absolutely. If Mr Scarlett is afraid, I'll buy him on my own responsibility, and you can St him from me whenever you like, iss Holborow." Owen waived his point. "I may be wrong," he admitted. "And if Mr Borkman thinks he can » "Oh, absolutely," boomed the courier. "Perfectly simple. It's too fine a bargain to miss." "Then I'll 1 take him," declared Laura quickly, opened her purse, and closed the argument. The Chinaman grinned and by a sleight of hand passed the bankrotes apparently into his belly, and rejected the blue cats headlong into his wife's apartment. The fawncoloured hero sait staring with iceblue eyes, haughty and intellectual. "Isn't he a lordly creature?" said the girl, sitting down beside him on the platform. "What shall I name him? Something that's big and dignified" — she mused — "and Siaf'Call him Chao Phya, then,", suggested Owen. "Good! Just it!" she exclaimed. "Come, Chao Phya ! Come to Missy!" The new member of the- peerage stared coldly, cried an amazing "Yaow!" and suddenly leapt upon the girl's shoulder. "There!" she cried in triumph. "He's purring already. The little old dear 1" "Excuse me a moment," said Borkman; "I'll be back directly, if you'll please wait here?" * As he stepped out into the glare he bumped against the tall Chinaman of the tattooed symbol. " Look out there!" lie snapped. Then, suddenly, they saw ,from the shop, his whole frame: struck by Borne change, and his clenched fists quiver. The coolie was ?! in King away, and as Borkman wheeled half about his eyes flamed with rage. It was a new face they caught sight of, and not a pleasant one. "Out o' the way!" he roared. "What thing you do heie? You wantehee oatch bamboo-chow? Vanwose!" The Chinaman meekly disappeared in the crowd. Borkman turned and stalked into a dark alley across the ! "^ Why should he abuse that poor i coolie so?" Miss Holborow wonder- • cd. "I never saw him lose his temper before."

, ' He was gone a noticeable time, > but reappeared all sunshine. : "I saw a little curio in a shop the . other day," he announced, smiling I down at them with benevolent rej spect. "I was reminded of it just now, and — or — made bold to get it, Miss Holborow, as a present to Chao Phya. I hope he'll accept ft." He handed over a silver collar, hung with three rather large bells, fluted oockle-shells that tinkled musically.. It was wrought with raised figures of men and elephants, in a maze of lotus-leaves. "Lao work from a bracelet," he explained. "It makes a rather good collar, and I had Sin Cheong's man put on 'Chao Phya' while I waited." Mrs Holborow was drawing on the dignity of an employer: "'Why, Mr Borkman," she began, "you Miow we can haTdly " "We can hardly thank you enough," cut in Laura, with a dangerous glance at her aunt. "It's beautiful work, and — and a great surprise. See, it fits his Highness as if made for him!" The paternal Borkman beamed on her as she thanked him once more. "Almost as well," he agreed. "And now, if you wish to see that Wat of the Lotuses, it's time we were going." So they left the pawnbroker braiding the pink threads into his pigtail, and crossed the viscid drain to the Btreet. The light streamed level down the white vista of shops. Chao Phya shook his silver bells in Miss Holborow's lap, the saises shouted at the opium dreamers in the road, and they drove off through a double line of yellow coolies, each shouldering twin baskets like scales of justice and streaming past at a stiff-kneed, wincing; trot. Beyond the town, the race-course and the plains flooded in sunset light, and the shafts of betel palm against the west stood black and slender like the crossed lances of a crowded squadron. The sightseers alighted before the gates of Sapatomawan, where a carved and gilded bridge spanned a klawng brimming with great pink lotus chalices, and broadgreen leaves, stiff as bronze work. "When they had halted on the steps of the temple it was already twilight; the bodies of kites roosting in high branches showed dark and indistinct as dusters of jack-fruit. And through the temple doors came an increasing light, as an old priest in saffron robe, the tiny flame of a taper in his shaking hand, moved among the leaping shadows of the sanctuary, from lamp to lamp, before the golden-glimmering Buddhas. Even Borkman's voice became an undertone, as he stood expounding to Aunt Julia the doctrine of the Fully Enlightened One. "The Hinayana church differs from the Mahayana on those points above all. And yet curiously — " From a safe distance behind them Laura, stroking Chao Phya's head, pursued a train -of thought broken only by two miles of space and a hundred varied sights. "I had to accept it," she whispered to Owen; "and he meant it well, but— why do you dislike him so?" "I've said nothing of the sort," retorted the young man. "I can tell what* you think," she replied from her meditation. "Our friends here, Mr and Mrs Sanders, wonder where we got him, I can see. But what's wrong? He only looks like the king of spades with his hair cropped. And Aunt Julia is fond of him!" A moment of silent mirth overcame her; then she looked grave again. "What do you think he's up to?" Scarlett shook his head. "It's— it's absurd!" he said. The futility of his vague, hearsay evidence irritated him. "I only wish I knew." "YaowJ" remarked Chao Phya, and jingled his silver bells in the dusk. (To Ie Continued.)