of his shoulder.

Resting against the empty shelves, he stood and surveyed the scene in
the vault.

Mrs. Sin, who had been kneeling beside the wicker cage, which was upset,
was in the act of standing upright. At her feet, and not far from the
motionless form of old Sam Tuk who sat like a dummy figure in his
chair before the stove, lay a palpitating mass of black feathers. Other
detached feathers were sprinkled about the floor. Feebly the raven's
wings beat the ground once, twice--and were still.

Sin Sin Wa uttered one sibilant word, withdrew his hands from his
sleeves, and, stepping around the end of the counter, dropped upon his
knees beside the raven. He touched it with long yellow fingers, then
raised it and stared into the solitary eye, now glazed and sightless as
its fellow. The smile had gone from the face of Sin Sin Wa.

"My Tling-a-Ling!" he moaned in his native mandarin tongue. "Speak to
me, my little black friend!"

A bead of blood, like a ruby, dropped from the raven's beak. Sin Sin
Wa bowed his head and knelt awhile in silence; then, standing up, he
reverently laid the poor bedraggled body upon a chest. He turned and
looked at his wife.

Hands on hips, she confronted him, breathing rapidly, and her glance of
contempt swept him up and down.

"I've often threatened to do it," she said in English. "Now I've done
it. They're on the wharf. We're trapped--thanks to that black, squalling
horror!"

"Tchee, tchee!" hissed Sin Sin Wa.

His gleaming eye fixed upon the woman unblinkingly, he began very
deliberately to roll up his loose sleeves. She watched him, contempt in
her glance, but her expression changed subtly, and her dark eyes grew
narrowed. She looked rapidly towards Sam Tuk but Sam Tuk never stirred.

"Old fool!" she cried at Sin Sin Wa. "What are you doing?"

But Sin Sin Wa, his sleeves rolled up above his yellow, sinewy forearms,
now tossed his pigtail, serpentine, across his shoulder and touched it
with his fingers, an odd, caressing movement.

"Ho!" laughed Mrs. Sin in her deep scoffing fashion, "it is for me
you make all this bhobbery, eh? It is me you are going to chastise, my
dear?"

She flung back her head, snapping her fingers before the silent
Chinaman. He watched her, and slowly--slowly--he began to crouch, lower
and lower, but always that unblinking regard remained fixed upon the
face of Mrs. Sin.

The woman laughed again, more loudly. Bending her lithe body forward in
mocking