our unbending demand, we will
depart until the like gong-stroke of to-morrow, when, if our claim be
not agreed to, all will cast down their implements of labour with the
swiftness of a lightning-flash and thereby involve the whole of your
too-profitable undertaking in well-merited stagnation. We go,
venerable head; auspicious omens attend your movements!"

"May the All-Seeing guide your footsteps," responded Wong Ts'in, and
with courteous forbearance he waited until they were out of hearing
before he added--"into a vat of boiling sulphur!"

Thus may the position be outlined when Wei Chang, the unassuming youth
whom the black-hearted Fang had branded with so degrading a
comparison, sat at his appointed place rather than join in the
discreditable conspiracy, and strove by his unaided dexterity to
enable Wong Ts'in to complete the tenscore embellished plates by the
appointed time. Yet already he knew that in this commendable ambition
his head grew larger than his hands, for he was the slowest-working
among all Wong Ts'in's craftsmen, and even then his copy could
frequently be detected from the original. Not to overwhelm his memory
with unmerited contempt it is fitting now to reveal somewhat more of
the unfolding curtain of events.

Wei Chang was not in reality a worker in the art of applying coloured
designs to porcelain at all. He was a student of the literary
excellences and had decided to devote his entire life to the engaging
task of reducing the most perfectly matched analogy to the least
possible number of words when the unexpected appearance of Fa Fai
unsettled his ambitions. She was restraining the impatience of a
powerful horse and controlling its movements by means of a leather
thong, while at the same time she surveyed the landscape with a
disinterested glance in which Wei Chang found himself becoming
involved. Without stopping even to consult the spirits of his revered
ancestors on so important a decision, he at once burned the greater
part of his collection of classical analogies and engaged himself, as
one who is willing to become more proficient, about Wong Ts'in's
earth-yards. Here, without any reasonable intention of ever becoming
in any way personally congenial to her, he was in a position
occasionally to see the distant outline of Fa Fai's movements, and
when a day passed and even this was withheld he was content that the
shadow of the many-towered building that contained her should obscure
the sunl