ng, piecemeal-pruning and a variety of less tersely
describable discomforts with which the time of this court need not be
taken up. The important consideration is, in what order are we to
proceed and when, if ever, are we to stop?"

"Under your benumbing eye, Excellence," suggested Ming-shu
resourcefully, "the precedent of taking first that for which the
written sign is the longest might be established. Failing that, the
names of all the various punishments might be inscribed on separate
shreds of parchment and these deposited within your state umbrella.
The first withdrawn by an unbiased--"

"High Excellence," Kai Lung ventured to interrupt, "a further plan
suggests itself which--"

"If," exclaimed Ming-shu in irrational haste, "if the criminal
proposes to narrate a story of one who in like circumstances--"

"Peace!" interposed Shan Tien tactfully. "The felon will only be
allowed the usual ten short measures of time for his suggestion, nor
must he, under that guise, endeavour to insert an imagined tale."

"Your ruling shall keep straight my bending feet, munificence,"
replied Kai Lung. "Hear now my simplifying way. In place of cited
wrongs--which, after all, are comparatively trivial matters, as being
merely offences against another or in defiance of a local
usage--substitute one really overwhelming crime for which the penalty
is sharp and explicit."

"To that end you would suggest--?" Uncertainty sat upon the brow of
both Shan Tien and Ming-shu.

"To straighten out the entangled thread this person would plead guilty
to the act--in a lesser capacity and against his untrammelled will--of
rejoicing musically on a day set apart for universal woe: a crime
aimed directly at the sacred person of the Sublime Head and all those
of his Line."

At this significant admission the Mandarin's expression faded; he
stroked the lower part of his face several times and unostentatiously
indicated to the two attendants that they should retire to a more
distant obscurity. Then he spoke.

"When did this--this alleged indiscretion occur, Kai Lung?" he asked
in a considerate voice.

"It is useless to raise a cloud of evasion before the sun of your
penetrating intellect," replied the story-teller. "The eleventh day of
the existing moon was its inauspicious date."

"That being yesterday? Ming-shu, you upon whom the duty of regulating
my admittedly vagarious mind devolves, what happened officially on the
eleventh day of the Month