, new, late time; the face of subtle eyes
and guarded dignity. And I wondered, as I had often wondered, whether Lew
Wee, lone alien in the abiding place of mad folks, did not suffer a vast
homesickness for his sane kith, who do not misspend their days building
up certain grotesque animals to slaughter them for a dubious food. True,
he had the compensation of believing invincibly that the Arrowhead Ranch
and all its concerns lay upon his own slightly bowed shoulders; that the
thing would fast crumble upon his severance from it. But I questioned
whether this were adequate. I felt him to be a man of sorrow if not of
tragedy. Vaguely he reached me as one who had survived some colossal
buffeting.

As I mused upon this Ma Pettengill sorted the evening mail and to Lew Wee
she now took his San Francisco newspaper, _Young China,_ and a letter.
Half an hour later Lew Wee brought wood to replenish the fire. He
disposed of this and absently brushed the hearth with a turkey wing.
Then he straightened the rug, crossed the room, and straightened on the
farther wall a framed portrait in colour of Majestic Folly, a prize bull
of the Hereford strain. Then he drew a curtain, flicked dust from a
corner of the table, and made a slow way to the kitchen door, pausing
to alter slightly the angle of a chair against the wall.

Ma Pettengill, at the table, was far in the Red Gap _Recorder_ for the
previous day. I was unoccupied and I watched Lew Wee. He was doing
something human; he was lingering for a purpose. He straightened another
chair and wiped dust from the gilt frame of another picture, Architect's
Drawing of the Pettengill Block, Corner Fourth and Main streets, Red Gap,
Washington. From this feat he went softly to the kitchen door, where he
looked back; hung waiting in the silence. He had made no sound, yet he
had conveyed to his employer a wish for speech. She looked up at him from
the lamp's glow, chin down, brows raised, and eyes inquiring of him over
shining nose glasses.

"My Uncle's store, Hankow, burn' down," said Lew Wee.

"Why, wasn't that too bad!" said Ma Pettengill.

"Can happen!" said Lew Wee positively.

"Too bad!" said Ma Pettengill again.

"I send him nine hundred dollars your money. Money burn, too," said Lew
Wee.

"Now, now! Well, that certainly is too bad! What a shame!"

"Can happen!" affirmed Lew Wee.

It was colourless. He was not treating his loss lightly nor yet was he
bewailing it.

"You put your mo