The gate of the town yawned black.  From the streets glimmered a few lanterns, like candles in a long cave.  But shunning these unfriendly corridors, he led her roundabout, now along the walls, now through the dim ways of an outlying hamlet.  A prolonged shriek of growing fright and anguish came slowly toward them—­the cry of a wheelbarrow carrying the great carcass of a pig, waxy white and waxy red, like an image from a chamber of horrors.  In the blue twilight, fast deepening, the most familiar things became grotesque.  A woman’s voice telling stories behind shadow pictures, and the capricious play of the black puppets on her lighted screen, had the effect of incantation.  Before the booth of a dentist, the long strings of black teeth swayed in the lantern-glow, rattling, like horrid necklaces of cannibals.  And from a squat den—­where on a translucent placard in the dull window flickered the words “Foreign Earth,” and the guttering door-lantern hinted “As You Like It”—­there came a sweet, insidious, potent smell that seemed more poisonous than mere opium.

“Let’s go faster,” said the girl.  “Somehow, the dark makes me uneasy to-night.”

Skirting the town, they struck at last the open road beyond, and saw against a fading sky the low black bulk of the nunnery, pierced with orange squares.  Past its landward wall, lanterns moved slowly, clustered here and there by twos and threes, and dispersed.  Cackling argument came from the ditch, wherever the lantern-bearers halted; and on the face of the wall, among elbowing shadows, shone dim strips of scarlet.  Both pillars of the gate were plastered with them.

“Placards,” said Heywood.  “Things are ripening fast.”  Lighting match from match, he studied the long red scrolls, crowded with neat rows of symbols.  He read them off slowly.

’The Garden of the Three Exquisites.’—­Pshaw! that’s a theatre notice:  enterprising manager.—­Ah, more like it.  Long preamble, regular trimetrical platitudes—­here we are:—­

“’These Red-Bristled Ghosts teach their dupes to break the ancestral tablets, and to worship the picture of a naked infant, which points one finger toward heaven, another toward earth.—­To each man entering the False Religion, a pill is given which confuses and darkens the mind.—­Why they dig out babies’ eyes:  from one hundred pounds of Chinese lead can be extracted seven pounds of silver, and the remaining ninety-three pounds can be sold at the original cost.  This silver can be extracted only by the elixir of black eyes.  The green eyes of barbarians are of no use.’—­Really, what follows is too—­er—­obscure.  But here’s the close:  ’Tao-tais of the villages, assemble your population.  Patriots, join!  Let us hurl back these wizard-beasts beyond the oceans, to take their place among the strange things of creation!’”

“And the big characters,” she added, “the big characters you tried to hide, are ‘Kill’ and ’Burn’?”

Gray eyes and dark eyes met steadily, while the last match, reddening the blood in his fingers, slowly burned out.