ow people, to kill me who has killed a low man;
but my friends by the Yang-tze-kiang were glad that the ruler died, and
you of the low people are glad that Joel is dead. Yet it is your duty to
kill me.... But it shall not be."

He quickly reached out his hands and drew the burning brazier close to
his feet; then, suddenly, from a sleeve of his robe he took a little box
of the sacred tortoise-shell, pressed his lips to it, opened it, poured
its contents upon the flame, leaned over with his face close to the
brazier and inhaled the little puff of smoke that came from it.

So for a few seconds--and then he raised himself and sat still with eyes
closed and hands clasped in his long sleeves. Presently his head fell
forward on his breast.

A pungent smell passed through the chamber. It produced for the moment
dizziness in all present. Then the sensation cleared away. The Chinaman
at the right of Li Choo looked steadfastly at him; then, all at once,
he bared his shoulders and quickly bound a piece of sackcloth round his
head. This done, he raised his voice and cried out with a monotonous
ululation, and at once a second voice cried out in a long wailing call.

Outside Li Choo's kinsman, with his face turned to the north, was
calling his spirit back, though he knew it would not come.

At the first sound of the voice crying outside, the Chinaman beside Li
Choo leaped thrice in front of the brazier, the mat and the moveless
body.

At that moment the Young Doctor came forward. He who had leaped stood
between him and the body of Li Choo.

"You must not come. Li Choo, the superior man, is dead," he protested.

"I am a doctor," was the reply. "If he is dead, the law will not touch
him, and you shall be alone with him, but the law must know that he is
dead. That is the way that prevails among the 'low people,'" he added
ironically.

The Chinaman stood aside, and the Young Doctor stooped, felt the pulse,
touched the heart and lifted up the head and looked into Li Choo's
sightless eyes.

"He is dead," he said, and he came back again to the Coroner and the
others. "Let's get out of this," he added. "He is beyond our reach now.
No need for an inquest here. He has killed himself." Then he caught
Orlando's hand in a warm grip.

As they left the chamber, the kinsman of Li Choo was gently laying the
body down upon the bamboo mat. At the doorway the other son of the Duke
Ki was still monotonously calling back the departed spirit.