from his mind an assured conviction that the details
were not invariably as they were represented to be. Frequently would
one return in a very deficient and unpresentable condition of garment,
asserting that on his return, while passing through a lonely and
unprotected district, he had been assailed by an armed band of robbers,
and despoiled of all he possessed. Another would claim to have been made
the sport of evil spirits, who led him astray by means of false signs
in the forest, and finally destroyed his entire burden of commodities,
accompanying the unworthy act by loud cries of triumph and remarks of
an insulting nature concerning King-y-Yang; for the honourable character
and charitable actions of the person in question had made him very
objectionable to that class of beings. Others continually accounted
for the absence of the required number of taels by declaring that at
a certain point of their journey they were made the object of marks
of amiable condescension on the part of a high and dignified public
official, who, on learning in whose service they were, immediately
professed an intimate personal friendship with the estimable
King-y-Yang, and, out of a feeling of gratified respect for him, took
away all such contrivances as remained undisposed of, promising to
arrange the payment with the refined King-y-Yang himself when they
should next meet. For these reasons King-y-Yang was especially desirous
of obtaining one whose spoken word could be received, upon all points,
as an assured fact, and it was, therefore, with an emotion of internal
lightness that he confidently heard from those who were acquainted
with the person that Sen Heng was, by nature and endowments, utterly
incapable of representing matters of even the most insignificant degree
to be otherwise than what they really were.

Filled with an acute anxiety to discover what amount of success would
be accorded to his latest contrivance, King-y-Yang led Sen Heng to a
secluded chamber, and there instructed him in the method of selling
certain apparently very ingeniously constructed ducks, which would have
the appearance of swimming about on the surface of an open vessel of
water, at the same time uttering loud and ever-increasing cries, after
the manner of their kind. With ill-restrained admiration at the skilful
nature of the deception, King-y-Yang pointed out that the ducks which
were to be disposed of, and upon which a seemingly very low price was
fixed,