On the road to Sacramento he was twice playfully thrown from the top of the stagecoach by an intelligent but deeply intoxicated Caucasian, whose moral nature was shocked at riding with one addicted to opium-smoking.  At Hangtown he was beaten by a passing stranger—­purely an act of Christian supererogation.  At Dutch Flat he was robbed by well-known hands from unknown motives.  At Sacramento he was arrested on suspicion of being something or other, and discharged with a severe reprimand—­possibly for not being it, and so delaying the course of justice.  At San Francisco he was freely stoned by children of the public schools; but, by carefully avoiding these monuments of enlightened progress, he at last reached, in comparative safety, the Chinese quarters, where his abuse was confined to the police and limited by the strong arm of the law.

The next day he entered the washhouse of Chy Fook as an assistant, and on the following Friday was sent with a basket of clean clothes to Chy Fook’s several clients.

It was the usual foggy afternoon as he climbed the long windswept hill of California Street—­one of those bleak, gray intervals that made the summer a misnomer to any but the liveliest San Franciscan fancy.  There was no warmth or color in earth or sky, no light nor shade within or without, only one monotonous, universal neutral tint over everything.  There was a fierce unrest in the wind-whipped streets:  there was a dreary vacant quiet in the gray houses.  When Ah Fe reached the top of the hill, the Mission Ridge was already hidden, and the chill sea breeze made him shiver.  As he put down his basket to rest himself, it is possible that, to his defective intelligence and heathen experience, this “God’s own climate,” as was called, seemed to possess but scant tenderness, softness, or mercy.  But it is possible that Ah Fe illogically confounded this season with his old persecutors, the schoolchildren, who, being released from studious confinement, at this hour were generally most aggressive.  So he hastened on, and turning a corner, at last stopped before a small house.

It was the usual San Franciscan urban cottage.  There was the little strip of cold green shrubbery before it; the chilly, bare veranda, and above this, again, the grim balcony, on which no one sat.  Ah Fe rang the bell.  A servant appeared, glanced at his basket, and reluctantly admitted him, as if he were some necessary domestic animal.  Ah Fe silently mounted the stairs, and entering the open door of the front chamber, put down the basket and stood passively on the threshold.

A woman, who was sitting in the cold gray light of the window, with a child in her lap, rose listlessly, and came toward him.  Ah Fe instantly recognized Mrs. Tretherick; but not a muscle of his immobile face changed, nor did his slant eyes lighten as he met her own placidly.  She evidently did not recognize him as she began to count the clothes.  But the child, curiously examining him, suddenly uttered a short, glad cry.