A KYAN LONG-HOUSE

Negri Kapuas the way we had come; others, discrediting the Iban's assurance that they were gutta collectors, advised that part of the men return to warn their families that a hostile invasion was imminent; while a few, among whom we were numbered, stoutly maintained that the wisest course was to pursue our way toward Kapit. They consulted omens of various kinds, but the warnings were either uncertain, or else yielded them scant comfort. They formed hurried plans for advance or for retreat, and as quickly abandoned them; and night came on leaving us still in doubt as to their intentions. We wondered if they would leave us there in the heart of the island, our journey but half completed, or whether they would have the courage to advance, believing, as most of them did, that the Ibans were on a head-hunting expedition under the guise of peaceful pursuits. The next day we renewed our arguments and entreaties, and late in the afternoon we finally prevailed upon them to start.

There were many wild adventures to be undergone before our long journey was ended. Finally, however, we reached the fort at Kapit, which stands on a high bank of the Rejang River, half an hour below the mouth of the Balleh. A well-built wooden stockade houses a dozen native soldiers and

a single government official, who keep guard over the trading bazar and the fertile valley below. Kyans and Kenyahs from the hills, Malays and Ibans from the lowlands, hear and answer the challenge "Who goes there?" which the sentinel shouts at every passing boat.

Year after year Minggu has sat at his desk, listening to lawsuits and collecting taxes, while the advent of the trading steamer or the visit of the Resident from Sibu breaks the monotony of his lonely life. Day after day the barefooted sentry paces to and fro in the lookout, groups of natives come and go bringing jungle produce to exchange for the stamped paper which makes them "children of the Rajah." The harvest follows the monsoon, and the feasting follows the harvest, but the unexpected rarely happens to Minggu.

When the sentinel ran in to tell him that "two white men have just arrived from the upper waters," he would not believe it. "No white men have passed up stream; how could they be returning?" But for once he was mistaken. Twentythree days after leaving Putus Sibau we

THE SACRIFICE

entered the gates of Fort Kapit, and the well-known voice of Minggu welcomed us back once more to the outskirts of civilization.

H

ESKETH, my boy," exclaimed the great General, taking the freckled hand of the dandified little blond fellow in both his, "if, as Raycroft says, you know more about China than any Englishman alive, if I want information in time of stress, may I come to you?"

Billy Hesketh twisted the waxed ends of his yellow mustache and raised his straggling eyebrows, barely indicating to the General, and the merchant in whose office on the Bund they all were, the presence of the Fourth-this was the rich trader Su Quong-Lo, who sat apparently immersed in his accounts-while the English student-interpreter hovered at hand. in case of need.

The merchant replied aloud to Hesketh's precautionary glance: "The Chinaman doesn't understand one word of English; say whatever you want to."

Hesketh's keen blue eyes turned from the Fourth rather slowly. "General," he continued, "command me always. If I know these infernal heathen, time of stress' is very near; that old fellow there in the corner and his tribe are simply spoiling to torture, pike, or flood us; and when the right moment arrives, as they conceive it, they'll do it. Believe me, sir, all I can do is ride a horse. Raycroft," turning to the merchant, "is Young Hopeful outside? I promised to take him to the stables and show him how hard a Chinese pony can kick with a foreign devil on his back."

At this moment the Fourth arose, made his statements and his elaborate good-byes, and walked away.

Ten minutes later Billy and Young Hopeful followed his example, presently reaching a corner where a crumbling gray high wall curved down to the river's edge. A beautiful ash-tree in all its vernal greenery spread and drooped far over the wall from its starting - place within the garden. Hesketh lingered

under its grateful shade, while Young Hopeful forged ahead to the stables.

Suddenly Mr. Hesketh heard a queer little guttural scream, and at the same instant beheld, caught in the wide boughs of the ash, a splendid kite covered all over with a first-class dragon and many sacred texts. Billy understood the Chinese language, having spent fifteen years within constant ear-shot of it, and could read, dangling above his Occidental head, these pleasant maxims from the book Sun Tse: "While you discuss with the enemy, massacre him. Sow discord, but soften his heart with voluptuous music and the sight of handsome women. If you are weak, secure cover. Be patient and you will envelop him."

Again the small guttural moan, and more and more the kite wriggled and flopped, as its silken cord was twitched from the other side of the wall.

By whose hand?

By that of the most uncommonly pretty little creature imaginable, whose name was Add-A-Younger - Brother—which petition had been amply answered, since not only in his half-dozen earlier marriages had her father been blessed with many sons, but also with two by his seventh spouse, the mother of this little maid. This charming small personage was the sole go-away child of her sevenfold widowed father-that is, sole daughter-for so are little girls spoken of in the Flowery Kingdom, since they belong in theory from birth rather to the families of future husbands than to their own.

Add-A-Younger-Brother jerked at the kite-string with all her strength. Billy, springing up to the wall and into the tree, caught the kite, quite unseen by its mistress, and promised himself a bit of fun, and possibly an arrest-for which he didn't care a button-when he should jump down into the rich man's garden and restore the dragon and the texts to their rightful owner.

Add-A-Younger-Brother

stood still; her pink lips parted to show her small even teeth, and she gazed with wonder at the kite frisking about at Billy's whim. She laughed and clapped her palms, but softly, lest the servants should come and disturb this beautiful novelty.

She was only sixteen-a child whose father, of course, regarded her as a burden soon to be gotten rid of by a marriage to a nice young man whom she had never seen, named Excite-the-Clouds. She had come into her womanhood all unawares, unheeded. Yet in some mysterious fashion the echo of the outer world had floated over the great gray wall, and she had felt unrestful cravings. When Billy pulled the cord of her kite she wondered who it was up in the ash-tree. Hesketh jumped down into the garden, landing at the side of the mistress of the kite, who uttered a low scream of terror, and retreated as fast as she could, up the garden, beating the air with her small fists and covering her face with her wide sleeves. Hesketh pursued her; he spoke to her in pretty fair Chinese. She halted, but still held up her sleeves as a sort of screen betwixt them.

"Honorable, virtuous, industrious, and pious young lady," quoth he, "allow an unworthy worm to restore this to you on his knees!" and Hesketh knelt at the tiny feet of Add-A-Younger-Brother and held up the big kite, the reel attached to its silk cord being still between the taper fingers of the little lady.

"Foreign mister," whispered Add-AYounger-Brother, "go away from Chinese woman," and then she lowered the sleeves one inch and peeped at him with immobile face but much-moved soul.

"Don't bid me to go until you have condescended to take back your kite from my unworthy embrace!" cried Billy, advancing a bit on his knees, as the tiny maid now thought proper to continue her retreat on her three-inch-long feet.

"Please, beautiful and elegant young lady, pause to receive it!"

Add-A-Younger-Brother did pause; dropped her sleeves another inch, let her young eyes rest in the tender admiring glance of his, and was reaching out her tiny hand tow. zd him for the kite, when a scratch so slight Hesketh did not notice it caused her to sta. back, cover

VOL. CII-No. 612-117

up her face, and peg up to the latticed end of her father's house, still holding her reel in her hand, while Billy still had possession of the kite.

When he looked up the garden and saw a set of the slats move as Add-AYounger-Brother approached, saw a pair of eyes, saw the little maid apply her ear, then her mouth, to an opening, he understood, turned his back with a smile, and was just making up his mind to avoid the tediousness of an arrest and vault the gray wall, when a twitch at the cord still about his fingers made him stop. Not turning his head, he backed up the path in obedience to the dictates of the reel, until the line slackened; then he looked, and found himself face to face with AddA-Younger-Brother, whose interview with the Unseen must have been potent, since now she smiled at Billy Hesketh, and bowed down to the ground, touching the latest imprint of his high heel with her forehead in the dust, and taking the kite from him, said, in the softest voice imaginable:

"Foreign mister, highly welcomed, honorable sir, deign to occupy the squalid, miserable, and despicable house of my father, stoop to inhabit the vile and filthy garden. Let your humble slave set you out refreshment, which, unfit for the curs, yet is the most delicious I have to offer."

Hesketh, while disengaging his fingers from the cord, and raising Add-AYounger-Brother to a far more precarious position on her feet, looked around and questioned if he had swung himself into a tea-house garden; but one glance sufficed to dispel this idea, and, fascinated with the note of mystery, he plied his diminutive hostess with many compliments and smiles; also with sweetmeats from his pocket, at the same time contriving to interweave as diplomatic an inquiry into the cause of her altered demeanor as was at his command. At last, all subtler methods failing, he put a direct question:

essence escaped from the eternal flask, she raised her long lids a little from her soft eyes, and shot a swift glance up at Billy.

"Chinese woman had not looked at foreign mister when she screamed so hard."

And Billy, whose heart had been touched by dozens of ladies all over the habitable globe, felt that susceptible organ bump once again in his breast most pleasantly.

At the same time he did not lose sight of the fixed principles of the Oriental social code, and while agreeably stirred by the unexpected, yet felt called upon to fathom the why.

"Was the honorable father away from home? and all the other honorable and elevated relatives? and the servants?"

But Add-A-Younger-Brother's instructions did not help her here, so she merely hung her head, laughed, and made for the mystified Billy a cup of tea, which was as nectar to the lips of that young gentleman; and when the small maid sat down on a stool at his side, when he lowered his cup, sweetened with a bit from his store, to her pink lips, when she sipped, while her little eyes slanted off toward the lattice, Billy didn't notice that; he was in that state of mind which would have been natural to any man of sensibility-under similar conditions.

"To the devil and the deep sea with conventions and precedents! By-and-by," said he to himself, "I might make a firstclass little Christian of her, and perhaps-"

At which point in his musings Add-AYounger-Brother jumped up, pushed his teacup back in his hand, and said:

"Foreign mister go now. Go quick!" There was a scratching on the lattice, and Billy returned with a bounce to the riddle of his whereabouts, rose, put down the cup, and said, in a hurried whisper, "Come again soon?"

"Do not know; maybe."
"Make a sign?"

"What sign?" Add-A-Younger-Brother had now pegged quite up to the lattice, and leaning against it, possibly derived not only physical but mental support from it.

Then, as they reached the garden end, Add-A-Younger-Brother said to Billy:

"Maybe, some day, let little bird go loose from string up in tree; then foreign mister come in again, drink more of my honorable father's best tea; maybe; don't know. Good-by," and she smiled and fluttered her fan so adorably, yet with such a quaint infantine grace, such a melancholy droop of the corners of her mouth, as made Billy swear there never was such a delicious little thing on earth.

While Mr. Hesketh was getting back to the commonplace and the stable, AddA-Younger-Brother got on the other side of the lattice into the large pleasant reception-room of her father's abode. Her father chanced to be Su Quong-Lo, the merchant whom Billy had seen only that very morning in Raycroft's countinghouse. He was a very intelligent, highly considered, astute, rich Chinese gentleman; subtle as all his race, but with possibly an accentuation of that trait-which statement may be the better recognized when it is said that Su Quong-Lo had in his youth spent seven years in San Francisco, and spoke English fluently.

Add-A-Younger-Brother stood silent, then bowed deferentially to her parent.

Su Quong-Lo beckoned to his go-away child; she came near and knelt to listen to his instructions; and when her father ceased speaking she bowed her forehead meekly in the dust and answered:

"I will obey the commands of my honorable father at any price it may cost, even of life.

"Then," replied Su Quong-Lo, "my foolish child may expect great and elegant rewards from the gods in the way of a superior son in the first year of her marriage with Excite-the-Clouds."

Su Quong-Lo now took up his pipe, while Add-A-Younger-Brother withdrew to her room, sat down on her oven-bed, and embroidered on the longevity pillows, but she forgot all about her intended husband, and saw nothing between her stitches but Billy Hesketh's blue eyes.

At Ho-hsi-tou, fifty miles from Tien-tsin, five thousand men were garrisoned, hoping each day to be summoned for active service by the great General in Tien-tsin. It was the amiable intention of the Fourth and his associates to drown out these five thousand foreign devils like rats; therefore Su