so that the bullet buried itself harmlessly in the roof of the apartment. Before Pennicuick could recover himself, a dozen men were on him, and he was disarmed and thrown upon the floor. Α soldier on either side of Conway had also seized each an arm, though he made no sign of resistance.

'We are Englishmen, Twang-hi,' he exclaimed in a loud voice, ' and claim the protection of our flag.'

'If what I have just heard is true,' returned the mandarin,' the Son of Heaven himself could scarcely protect yonder wretch. He has committed a sacrilege more impious than has yet entered into the brain of man to execute.'

6

This is some terrible mistake or lying charge, your Excellency.'

'Mistake!' cried the mandarin in a tone of horror; 'look yonder !'

Conway looked, and beheld the treacherous Fu-chow holding in his open palms, with a mixture of malignant joy and superstitious reverence, a shining something, like the drop of a chandelier.

'It is the sacred Shay-le of Buddha, O barbarian devil!' continued Twang-hi, that your comrade has stolen from its tenthousand-year-old shrine.'

'It is impossible!' cried Conway, in tones almost as horrorstricken as those of the other; for he well knew the heinous nature of such an outrage in Chinese eyes, and also its consequences. 'I saw him place it round his neck last night,' put in Fu-chow, and have just taken it from thence with my own hands.'

O Pen, is this true?' cried Conway in a tone of agony,'that you took away the Shay-le?'

"Yes, it's true enough,' returned Pennicuick, speaking with some difficulty from the number of Chinese upon his chest, but still with a certain characteristic scorn. I was a fool to do it, of course, and I am sorry for it; but not half so sorry as that you made me miss that whey-faced scoundrel Fu-chow with my first barrel.'

Not a syllable of this, of course, was intelligible to those who heard it, except that Fu-chow caught the sound of his own name. As he did so, the same look of vindictive fury came into his face that Conway had noticed in it on that night when the captain had played the spy.

'You would not turn traitor, surely, and destroy those who have fed you?' pleaded Conway desperately.

'No,' said Fu-chow slowly; 'only, the guilty must needs be punished. His Excellency here, as my father the mandarin has informed me, is one whose justice never fails. I will tell him you are a good man; how you defended my daughter from this devil, and