with it--darned near to the bone. He did so!'

"Calls himself a cowman, does he? He might of been--once. Now he ain't no
more than a woman's home companion!"

VIII

CAN HAPPEN!

Lew Wee, prized Chinese chef of the Arrowhead Ranch, had butchered,
cooked, and served two young roosters for the evening meal with a
finesse that cried for tribute. As he replaced the evening lamp on the
cleared table in the big living room he listened to my fulsome praise of
his artistry as Marshal Foch might hear me say that I considered him a
rather good strategist. Lew Wee heard but gave no sign, as one set above
the petty adulation of compelled worshipers. Yet I knew his secret soul
made festival of my words and would have been hurt by their withholding.
This is his way. Not the least furtive lightening of his subtle eyes
hinted that I had pleased him.

He presently withdrew to his tiny room off the kitchen, where, as was
his evening custom for half an hour, he coaxed an amazing number of
squealing or whining notes from his two-stringed fiddle. I pictured him
as he played. He would be seated in his wicker armchair beside a little
table on which a lamp glowed, the room tightly closed, window down,
door shut, a fast-burning brown-paper cigarette to make the atmosphere
more noxious. After many more of the cigarettes had made it all but
impossible, Lew Wee, with the lamp brightly burning, as it would burn the
night through--for devils of an injurious sort and in great numbers will
fearlessly enter a dark room--he would lie down to refreshing sleep. That
fantasy of ventilation! Lew Wee always sleeps in an air-tight room packed
with cigarette smoke, and a lamp turned high at his couchside; and Lew
Wee is hardy.

He played over and over now a plaintive little air of minors that put
a gentle appeal through two closed doors. It is one he plays a great
deal. He has told me its meaning. He says--speaking with a not unpleasant
condescension--that this little tune will mean: "Life comes like a
bird-song through the open windows of the heart." It sounds quite like
that and is a very satisfying little song, with no beginning or end.

He played it now, over and over, wanderingly and at leisure, and I
pictured his rapt face above the whining fiddle; the face, say, of the
Philosopher Mang, sage of the second degree and disciple of Confucius,
who was lifted from earth by the gods in a time we call B.C. but which
was then thought to be a fresh