me, his eye resting like a flash of lightning on a vacant place.
"Wherefore tarries Ning, the son of Shin, the Seed-sower?"

For a moment there was an edging of N'guk's inquiring glance from each
Being to his neighbour. Then Leou stood audaciously forth.

"He is reported to be engaged on a private family matter," he replied
gravely. "Haply his feet have become entangled in a mesh of hair."

N'guk turned his benevolent gaze upon another--one higher in
authority.

"Perchance," admitted the superior Being tolerantly. "Such things are.
How comes it else that among the earth-creatures we find the faces of
the deities--both the good and the bad?"

"How long has he been absent from our paths?"

They pressed another forward--keeper of the Outer Path of the West
Expanses, he.

"He went, High Excellence, in the fifteenth of the earth-ruler Chun,
whom your enlightened tolerance has allowed to occupy the lower dragon
throne for twoscore years, as these earthlings count. Thus and thus--"

"Enough!" exclaimed the Supreme. "Hear my iron word. When the
buffoon-witted Ning rises from his congenial slough this shall be his
lot: for sixty thousand ages he shall fail to find the path of his
return, but shall, instead, thread an aimless flight among the frozen
ambits of the outer stars, carrying a tormenting rain of fire at his
tail. And Leou, the Whisperer," added the Divining One, with the
inscrutable wisdom that marked even his most opaque moments, "Leou
shall meanwhile perform Ning's neglected task."
*

For five and twenty years Ning had laboured in the fields of Sun Wei
with a wooden collar girt about his neck, and Sun Wei had prospered.
Yet it is to be doubted whether this last detail deliberately hinged
on the policy of Leou or whether Sun Wei had not rather been drawn
into some wider sphere of destiny and among converging lines of
purpose. The ways of the gods are deep and sombre, and water once
poured out will flow as freely to the north as to the south. The wise
kowtows acquiescently whatever happens and thus his face is to the
ground. "Respect the deities," says the imperishable Sage, "but do not
become familiar with them." Sun Wei was clearly wrong.

To Ning, however, standing on a grassy space on the edge of a flowing
river, such thoughts do not extend. He is now a little hairy man of
gnarled appearance, and his skin of a colour and texture like a ripe
lo-quat. As he stands there, s