or one who exercised almost unlimited authority.
In view of his own childlessness, and of his final dependence on the
services of others, which arrangement promised the most regular and
liberal transmission of supplies to his expectant spirit when he had
passed into the Upper Air, and would his connection with one very
important official or with two subordinate ones secure him the greater
amount of honour and serviceable recognition among the more useful
deities?

To Wong Ts'in's logical mind it seemed as though there must be a
definite answer to this problem. If one manner of behaving was right
the other must prove wrong, for as the wise philosopher Ning-hy was
wont to say: "Where the road divides, there stand two Ning-hys." The
decision on a matter so essential to his future comfort ought not to
be left to chance. Thus it had become a habit of Wong Ts'in's to
penetrate the Outer Spaces in the hope of there encountering a
specific omen.

Alas, it has been well written: "He who thinks that he is raising a
mound may only in reality be digging a pit." In his continual search
for a celestial portent among the solitudes Wong Ts'in had of late
necessarily somewhat neglected his earthly (as it may thus be
expressed) interests. In these emergencies certain of the more
turbulent among his workers had banded themselves together into a
confederacy under the leadership of a craftsman named Fang. It was the
custom of these men, who wore a badge and recognized a mutual oath and
imprecation, to present themselves suddenly before Wong Ts'in and
demand a greater reward for their exertions than they had previously
agreed to, threatening that unless this was accorded they would cast
down the implements of their labour in unison and involve in idleness
those who otherwise would have continued at their task. This menace
Wong Ts'in bought off from time to time by agreeing to their
exactions, but it began presently to appear that this way of appeasing
them resembled Chou Hong's method of extinguishing a fire by directing
jets of wind against it. On the day with which this related story has
so far concerned itself, a band of the most highly remunerated and
privileged of the craftsmen had appeared before Wong Ts'in with the
intolerable Fang at their head. These men were they whose skill
enabled them laboriously to copy upon the surfaces of porcelain a
given scene without appreciable deviation from one to the other, for
in those remote cycl