He wasn’t going to get off, at first; but the German got a big stick from the roadside and started for him, so he climbed down the other side and started to run.  But the cowardly German didn’t chase him a single step.  He got back in his seat and started down the road quicker than it looked like his truck had been able to travel.

Anyway, Lew Wee was a lot nearer to town, owing to the German not having been sensitive at first; and if worst come to worst he could walk.  It looked like he’d have to.  Then he saw he’d have to walk, anyway, because this brutal German that put him off the truck hadn’t give him back his dollar, and that was all he had.  He now put the First High Curse of the One Hundred and Nine Malignant Devils on all Germans.  It is a grand curse, he says, and has done a lot of good in China.  He was uncertain whether it would work away from home; but he says it did.  Every time he gets hold of a paper now he looks for the place where Germans in close formation is getting mowed down by machine-gun fire.

But his money was gone miles away from him by this time; so he started his ten-mile walk.  I don’t know.  It’s always been a mystery to me how he could do it.  He could get kind of used to it himself, and mebbe he thought the public could do as much.  It was an interesting walk he had.

At first, he thought he was only attracting the notice of the vulgar, like when some American ruffians doing a job of repair work on the road threw rocks at him when he stopped to rest a bit.  But he soon noticed that rich ladies and gentlemen also seemed to shun him as he passed through little towns.  He carried his impetuous burden on a stick over his shoulder and at a distance seemed to be an honest workman; but people coming closer didn’t look respectfully at him, by any means.  It seemed as if some odium was attached to him.

Once he stopped to pick a big red rose from a bush that hung over the wall in front of a pretty place, and a beautiful child dressed like a little princess stood there; and, being fond of children, like all Chinee men, he spoke to her; but a nurse screamed and run out at him and yelled something in another foreign language.  He thinks it was swearing, same as the German, though she looked like a lady.  So he went sadly on, smelling of his lovely rose from time to time.

The only way I can figure out how he got through them suburbs is that parties wanted to have him arrested or shot, or something, but wouldn’t let him stick round long enough to get it done; they was in two minds about him, I guess:  they wished to detain him, but also wished harder to have him away.

So he went on uninjured, meeting murderous looks and leaving excitement in his trail; hearing men threaten him even while they run away from him.  It hurt him to be shunned this way—­him that had always felt so friendly toward one and all.  He couldn’t deny it by this time:  people was shunning him on account of what Doctor Hong Foy wanted alive and in good condition.