“Assuredly,” replied the headman; “the prescribed method is the part of the system that has received the most attention.  As the one of whom you complain is a mandarin of the fifth degree, you may fittingly address yourself to his superiors of the fourth, third, second and first degrees.  Then there are the city governors, the district prefects, the provincial rulers, the Imperial Assessors, the Board of Censors, the Guider of the Vermilion Pencil, and, finally, the supreme Emperor himself.  To each of these, if you are wealthy enough to reach his actual presence, you may prostrate yourself in turn, and each one, with many courteous expressions of intolerable regret that the matter does not come within his office, will refer you to another.  The more prudent course, therefore, would seem to be that of beginning with the Emperor rather than reaching him as the last resort, and as you are now without means of livelihood if you remain here there is no reason why you should not journey to the Capital and make the attempt.”

“The Highest!” exclaimed Ten-teh, with a pang of unfathomable emotion.  “Is there, then, no middle way?  Who is Ten-teh, the obscure and illiterate fisherman, that he should thrust himself into the presence of the Son of Heaven?  If the mother of the dutiful Chou Yii could destroy herself and her family at one blow to the end that her son might serve his sovereign with a single heart, how degraded an outcast must he be who would obtrude his own trivial misfortunes at so critical a time.”

“’A thorn in one’s own little finger is more difficult to endure than a sword piercing the sublime Emperor’s arm,’” replied the headman, resuming his occupation.  “But if your angle of regarding the various obligations is as you have stated it, then there is obviously nothing more to be said.  In any case it is more than doubtful whether the Fountain of Justice would raise an eyelash if you, by every combination of fortunate circumstance, succeeded in reaching his presence.”

“The headman has spoken, and his word is ten times more weighty than that of an ill-educated fisherman,” replied Ten-teh submissively, and he departed.

From that time Ten-teh sought to sustain life upon roots and wild herbs which he collected laboriously and not always in sufficient quantities from the woods and rank wastes around.  Soon even this resource failed him in a great measure, for a famine of unprecedented harshness swept over that part of the province.  All supplies of adequate food ceased, and those who survived were driven by the pangs of hunger to consume weeds and the bark of trees, fallen leaves, insects of the lowest orders and the bones of wild animals which had died in the forest.  To carry a little rice openly was a rash challenge to those who still valued life, and a loaf of chaff and black mould was guarded as a precious jewel.  No wife or daughter could weigh in the balance against a measure of corn, and men sold themselves into captivity to secure the coarse nourishment which the rich allotted to their slaves.  Those who remained in the villages followed in Ten-teh’s footsteps, so that the meagre harvest that hitherto had failed to supply one household now constituted the whole provision for many.  At length these persons, seeing a lingering but inevitable death before them all, came together and spoke of how this might perchance be avoided.