ield from the tottering wretch with his arm.

"Twenty-eight bowls," he stammered to himself, "twenty-eight
saki-bowls----"

At this moment the sleeping Chinaman awoke and looked at the drunken man
with a silly laugh.

"Yes, twenty-eight saki-bowls; it's all right--twenty-eight saki-bowls,"
repeated the drunken Jap, and reeled on along the houses.

Hung Wapu seemed to have ended his day's work with the polishing of the
twenty-eight saki-bowls; he piled them up in a heap and disappeared with
them into his cellar, followed with extraordinary agility by the Chinese
sleeper. He hurried through the chop-house, the occupants of which were
all fast asleep on their straw mats, passed through the opium-den, and
then, in the third room, divested himself of his Chinese coat. The
silk-cap with the pigtail attached was flung into a corner, and then,
dressed in a khaki uniform, he seated himself at a table and studied a
map of the city of San Francisco, making notes in a small book by the
light of a smoky oil lamp.

The drunken Jap, who had apparently had doubts about entering Hung
Wapu's chop-house, tottered on down the quiet street and made for
another paper-lantern, which hung above another cellar door about ten
houses farther on.

Here too, curiously enough, he found the Chinese landlord sitting on the
top step. He wanted to push him aside and stumble down the steps, but
the Chinaman stopped him.

"How much?" stuttered the drunken man.

"How much?" answered the Chinaman. "How much money will the great
stranger pay for a meal for his illustrious stomach in Si Wafang's
miserable hut? Forty kasch, forty kasch the noble son of the Rising Sun
must pay for a shabby meal in Si Wafang's wretched hut."

"Forty kasch? I'll bring the forty kasch, most noble Si Wafang. 'I won't
go home till morning, till daylight does appear,'" bawled the tipsy man,
and staggered on down the street, whereupon this landlord also
disappeared in his cellar, after extinguishing the paper lantern over
the doorway.

A death-like stillness reigned in the street, and no one imagined that
the rats were assembling, that the underground passages were full of
them, and that it only needed a sign to bring the swarming masses to the
surface.

A cold breeze from the sea swept through the deserted streets and a
misty veil enveloped the yellow light of the gas-lamps. The lanterns
hanging in front of the Chinese cellars were extinguished one by one,
and everyone