thing
moved, then the boughs parted in front of us, and through the great
lichen streamers and rugged bands of grey-green moss depending from
them, peered an old, drawn-looking face.

Suzee gave a piercing shriek of dismay, and started to her feet.

"My husband!" she gasped.

I sprang to my feet, and my right hand went to my hip pocket. The head
pushed through the thicket, and a bent and aged form followed slowly.
I drew out my revolver, but the figure of the old man straightened
itself up and he waved his hand impatiently, as if deprecating
violence.

"Sir, I have come after my wife," he said, in a low, broken tone.

I slipped the weapon back in my pocket. I had had an idea that he
might attack Suzee, but voice and face showed he was in a different
mood.

Suzee clung to my hand on her knees, crying and trembling.

"Go and sit over there," he said peremptorily to her, pointing to the
other side of the glade, far enough from us to be out of hearing.

She did not move, only clung and shivered and wept as before.

I bent over her, loosening my hand.

"Do as he says," I whispered; "no harm can come to you while I am
here."

Suzee let go my fingers reluctantly and crept away, sobbing, to the
opposite edge of the thicket. The old Chinaman motioned me to sit
down. I did so, mechanically wondering whether his calmness was a ruse
under cover of which he would suddenly stab me. He sat down, too,
stiffly, beside me, resting on his heels, and his hard, wrinkled hands
supporting his withered face.

"Now," he said, in a thin old voice; "look at me! I am an old man, you
are a young one. You are strong, you are well; you are rich too, I
think." He looked critically over me. "You have everything that I have
not, already. Why do you come here to rob an old man of all he has in
this world?"

I felt myself colour with anger. All the blood in my body seemed to
rush to my head and stand singing in my ears.

I felt a furious impulse to knock him aside out of my way; but his age
and weakness held me motionless.

"All my youth, when I was strong and good-looking as you are now, and
women loved me, I worked hard like a slave, and starved and saved.
When others played I toiled, when they spent I hoarded up. What was I
saving for? That I might buy myself _that_." He waved his hand in the
direction of Suzee, sitting in a little crumpled heap against a
gnarled tree opposite us.

"I bought her," he went on with increasing excite