ould find himself a
home upon orthodox lines and live happily ever afterwards. Before he
left Shanghai, he sent his little Chinese girl, a woman long ago, of
course, back to her native province in the interior, well supplied
with money and with the household furniture. For the boy he had
arranged everything. He was to be educated in some good, commercial
way, fitted to take care of himself in the future. Through his lawyer,
he set aside a certain sum for this purpose, to be expended annually
until the lad was old enough to earn his own living. In all ways
Rogers was thoughtful and decent, far-sighted and provident. No one
could accuse him of selfishness. He did not desert his woman, turn her
adrift unprovided for, as many another would have done. No, thank
heavens, he thought to himself as he leaned over the rail of the ship,
fast making its way down the yellow tide, he had still preserved his
sense of honour. So many men go to pieces out in the East, but he,
somehow, had managed to keep himself clear and clean.

Rogers drops out of the tale at this point, and as the ship slips out
of sight down the lower reaches of the Yangtzse, so does he disappear
from this story. It is to the boy that we must now turn our attention,
the half-caste boy who had received such a heritage of decency and
honour from one side of his house. In passing, let it be also said
that his mother, too, was a very decent little woman, in a humble,
Chinese way, and that his inheritance from this despised Chinese side
was not discreditable. His mother had gone obediently back to the
provinces, as had been arranged, the house passed into other hands,
and the half-caste boy was sent off to school somewhere, to finish his
education. Being young, he consoled himself after a time for the loss
of his home, its sudden and complete collapse. The memory of that
home, however, left deep traces upon him.

In the first place, he was inordinately proud of his white blood. He did
not know that it had cost his guardian considerable searching to find a
school where white blood was not objected to--when running in Chinese
veins. His schoolmates, of European blood, were less tolerant than the
school authorities. He therefore soon found his white blood to be a
curse. There is no need to go into this in detail. For every one who
knows the East, knows the contempt that is shown a half-breed, a
Eurasian. Neither fish, flesh nor fowl--an object of general distrust
and disg