Yang Hu take up a position of
unendurable dejection as he gazed reproachfully at the figure of the
all-knowing Buddha which surmounted the Temple where it was his custom
to sacrifice.

"Alas!" he exclaimed, lifting up his voice, when it became plain that
a large number of people was assembled awaiting his words, "to what end
does a person strive in this excessively evilly-regulated district? Or
is it that this obscure and ill-destined one alone is marked out as with
a deep white cross for humiliation and ruin? Father, and Sacred Temple
of Ancestral Virtues, wherein the meanest can repose their trust, he has
none; while now, being more destitute than the beggar at the gate, the
hope of honourable marriage and a robust family of sons is more remote
than the chance of finding the miracle-working Crystal Image which marks
the last footstep of the Pure One. Yesterday this person possessed no
secret store of silver or gold, nor had he knowledge of any special
amount of jade hidden among the mountains, but to his call there
responded four score goats, the most select and majestic to be found in
all the Province, of which, nevertheless, it was his yearly custom to
sacrifice one, as those here can testify, and to offer another as a duty
to the Yamen of Ping Siang, in neither case opening his eyes widely when
the hour for selecting arrived. Yet in what an unseemly manner is his
respectful piety and courteous loyalty rewarded! To-day, before this
person went forth on his usual quest, there came those bearing written
papers by which they claimed, on the authority of Ping Siang, the
whole of this person's flock, as a punishment and fine for his not
contributing without warning to the Celebration of Kissing the Emperor's
Face--the very obligation of such a matter being entirely unknown to
him. Nevertheless, those who came drove off this person's entire
wealth, the desperately won increase of a life full of great toil and
uncomplainingly endured hardship, leaving him only his cave in the
rocks, which even the most grasping of many-handed Mandarins cannot
remove, his cloak of skins, which no beggar would gratefully receive,
and a bright and increasing light of deep hate scorching within his mind
which nothing but the blood of the obdurate extortioner can efficiently
quench. No protection of charms or heavily-mailed bowmen shall
avail him, for in his craving for just revenge this person will meet
witchcraft with a Heaven-sent cause and