“I have only one sword, but it is in my hand,” cried Weng, reckless beneath the blow, and drawing it he at one stroke cut down the Mandarin before any could raise a hand.  Then breaking in the door of the hovel he would have saved the woman, but it was too late, so he took the head and body and threw them into the fire, saying:  “There, Mandarin, follow to secure justice.  They shall not bear witness against you Up There in your absence.”

The chair-carriers had fled in terror, but the villagers murmured against Weng as he passed through them.  “It was a small thing that one house and one person should be burned; now, through this, the whole village will assuredly be consumed.  He was a high official and visited justice impartially on us all.  It was our affair, and you, who are a stranger, have done ill.”

“I did you wrong, Mandarin,” said Weng, resuming his journey; “you took me for one of them.  I pass you the parting of the woman Che, burrowers in the cow-heap called Li-yong.”

“Oi-ye!” exclaimed a voice behind, “but yonder earth-beetles haply have not been struck off the Tablets and found that a maiden with well-matched eyes can watch two ways at once, all of a morning:  and thereby death through red spectacles is not that same death through blue spectacles.  Things in their appointed places, noble companion.”

“Greetings, wayfarer,” said Weng, stopping.  “The path narrows somewhat inconveniently hereabout.  Take honourable precedence.”

“The narrower the better to defend then,” replied the stranger good-humouredly.  “Whereto, also, two swords cut a larger slice than one.  Without doubt fivescore valiant bowmen will soon be a-ranging when they hear that the enemy goes upon two feet, and then ill befall who knows not the passes.”  As he spoke an arrow, shot from a distance, flew above their heads.

“Why should you bear a part with me, and who are you who know these recent things?” demanded Weng doubtfully.

“I am one of many, we being a branch of that great spreading lotus the Triad, though called by the tillers here around the League of Tomb-Haunters, because we must be sought in secret places.  The things I have spoken I know because we have many ears, and in our care a whisper passes from east to west and from north to south without a word being spilled.”

“And the price of your sword is that I should join the confederacy?” asked Weng thoughtfully.

“I had set out to greet you before the estimable Mandarin who is now saluting his ancestors was so inopportune as to do so,” replied the emissary.  “Yet it is not to be denied that we offer an adequate protection among each other, while at the same time punishing guilt and administering a rigorous justice secretly.”

“Lead me to your meeting-place, then,” said Weng determinedly.  “I have done with the outer things.”