e distinction to
themselves and widespread credit to his resourceful system. One
gratified candidate, indeed, had compared his triumphal passage
through the many grades of the competition to the luxurious ease of
being carried in a sedan-chair, and from that time Tsin Lung was
jestingly referred to as a "sedan-chair."

It might reasonably be thought that a person enjoying this enviable
position would maintain a loyal pride in the venerable traditions of
his house and suffer the requirements of his craft to become the four
walls of his ambition. Alas! Tsin Lung must certainly have been born
under the influence of a very evil planet, for the literary quality of
his profession did not entice his imagination at all, and his sole and
frequently-expressed desire was to become a pirate. Nothing but the
necessity of obtaining a large sum of money with which to purchase a
formidable junk and to procure the services of a band of capable and
bloodthirsty outlaws bound him to Ho Chow, unless, perchance, it might
be the presence there of Fa Fei after he had once cast his piratical
eye upon her overwhelming beauty.

The other of the two persons was Hien, a youth of studious desires and
unassuming manner. His father had been the chief tax-collector of the
Chunling mountains, beyond the town, and although the exact nature of
the tax and the reason for its extortion had become forgotten in the
process of interminable ages, he himself never admitted any doubt of
his duty to collect it from all who passed over the mountains, even
though the disturbed state of the country made it impossible for him
to transmit the proceeds to the capital. To those who uncharitably
extended the envenomed tongue of suspicion towards the very existence
of any Imperial tax, the father of Hien replied with unshaken loyalty
that in such a case the sublime Emperor had been very treacherously
served by his advisers, as the difficulty of the paths and the
intricate nature of the passes rendered the spot peculiarly suitable
for the purpose, and as he was accompanied by a well-armed and
somewhat impetuous band of followers, his arguments were inevitably
successful. When he Passed Beyond, Hien accepted the leadership, but
solely out of a conscientious respect for his father's memory, for his
heart was never really in the occupation. His time was almost wholly
taken up in reading the higher Classics, and even before he had seen
Fa Fei his determination had been taken