arm wildly up in the air, and pointed to her window. The demon beckoned me up. I climbed up the jagged trunk of the old tree, reached one of the long arm-like branches, and crept along its frail and swaying support. A dull light shining in the room showed me that woman-her pale hands bloody, her person disguised in men's clothes, and her eyes gleaming with superhuman lustre and fiendish triumph. Morning came, and with it crowds of agitated, pale men, and women shrieking with terror, and news of another murder. which you admired; he crushed me with that iron hand which you saw. I was high-strung, impetuous, passionate. I loved him - God knows how much!—but I defied him. I did not want to be ruled. In this evil hour his brother Montague came to live with us. He treated me kindly, and I trusted him. I told him I was unhappy-fatal, weak confession! He was a mean creature. He loved me-he asked me to fly with him. I refused. I told him I hated him. He went away, but left a poisoned arrow. He told his brother that I had confessed that I loved him, and he fled to save Yes, Clifford Lewis, with his handsome, cruel our happiness. face, lay murdered in his bed. "How artistically he planned his revenge! In another hour from the discovery I was ar- When my husband found that my pride outstood rested as his murderer. his cruelty, he struck deeper. We had a child" The proof was this: a man's track was dis--here the dying woman struggled fearfully with covered leading past the old tree, from the house in which he lived to mine, and near one of the tracks, and clinging to the torn bark of the tree, was my handkerchief. I only asked one favor of the crowd of angry men who seized upon me as if I were a wild beast, and that was that I might write a note. They assented; but when they saw it was addressed to the poor dying woman up stairs, they all said "No." "The man is mad," said one; 66 we will not allow the poor invalid to be alarmed by his ravings." But the gray-haired young physician offered to take it for me. I wrote to her these words: "Be firm-the dead sycamore and I alone know: we are both incapable of speaking." I sat on the stone floor of the prison, awaiting the morning. I knew that I loved a monster, but I loved still. No thought of betraying her came to my mind. All other thoughtshome, friends, good name-were drowned in this all-conquering sea. I recalled my morbid sensations before I saw her; I compared that night's reflections with my present state of feeling. Was I not a murderer at heart? Was it not just that I should be punished for the sin I had conceived but not committed? Morning came, and with it my release. Mrs. Brown had confessed the crime, and was dying. She wished to see me. She was lying on a sofa, and by her side a grave old man held her pulse in one hand, and his watch in the other. She opened her eyes, and held out a feeble hand to me. "Poor, generous fool, did you think I would let you die?" she said. "No; I have killed all I wished to kill. I kept silence till my poor tools, my so-called nurse and physician, could escape. I needed them, and used them; but they are innocent, except of knowing me, and they are gone. How long have I?" she asked of the physician. "Not an hour," he answered, solemnly. "More than enough. I am the wife of Clifford Lewis. He won me by that soft voice death, and with that agony which is fiercer"a beautiful blue-eyed boy, with all that is good imaged in his face, and not yet blighted by his inheritance of evil. He came at night, when he slept in my arms. I hope he is dead-I have never seen him since. "I could not die; but there was one thing left for me to do-I could kill! I would cleanse the race of these two plague-spots. No other woman should suffer as I had done." I had a dim consciousness that the room was full of people, that this woman lay dying on a sofa. I could not collect my senses. I dropped on my knees by her side, and strove to say a prayer for her soul-her guilty soul. I heard a cry of agony, a convulsed breathing, and I remember no more. A dark room, the same grave old gentleman, the too familiar face of Susan with a bowl of gruel in her hand. This picture succeeded the last. I tried in vain to reconcile the two. "There, seems to me he looks sensibler," said Susan. The doctor (so I imagined) started up: "Yes, here is a change for the better. My dear young friend, how do you feel?" I answered with the ghost of a voice, that I did not know.. "A very bad typhus-a very complicated, important case. You are alive, my young friend, through the blessing of God and successful medical treatment." "And the tree, is that typhus? and Mrs. Brown, is she typhus? and murder, and all that, merely typhus ?" "Malignant typhoid, my dear young friend. Great irritation of the brain, preceded almost always by low spirits, strange fancies, delirium, and too often death! But you are alive, and, my friend-" "Mrs. Brown wishes to know how the gentleman is," said a voice at the door. "Decidedly better," said the doctor. woman, I wish she had better advice!" "Poor It turned out that I had met Mrs. Brown at my chamber door, with the fever circulating in my veins, and had fallen down unconscious. | ant garment of many colors, strutted proudly The subsequent events had existed but in my up and down upon his temporary stage. fevered brain. I had transmuted two very respectable, snuffy old bachelors into my murdered men, and Mrs. Brown proved to be a very nice, though rather elderly and plain invalid lady, for whom I have the highest respect. "What is a Dragon-Fang, ingenious and well-educated conjuror ?" at last inquired Weichang-tze, a solemn-looking Mandarin of the third class, who was adorned with a sapphire button, and a one-eyed peacock's feather. "What is a Dragon-Fang?" "Is it possible," asked Piou-Lu, "that the wise and illustrious son of virtue, the Mandarin The tree-it was the merest old wreck you ever saw. No respectable demon accustomed to a warm climate would have thought for a moment of taking up his abode in it, particular-Wei-chang-tze, does not know what a Dragonly his winter-quarters. "But doctor," said I, after I got well enough to go down stairs, "I don't like the looks of Mrs. Brown's physician, after all." Fang is?" and the conjuror pricked up his ears at the Mandarin, as a hare at a barking dog. "Of course, of course," said the Mandarin Wei-chang-tze, looking rather ashamed of his having betrayed such ignorance, "one does not pass his examinations for nothing. I merely "I know the reason, my dear young friend; our instincts are very apt to be right," said the doctor, who was a two-and-twenty-grains-of-wished that you should explain to those ignorcalomel man. "You do well to distrust his ant people here what a Dragon-Fang was; that countenance; avoid him-he is a Homeopath- was why I asked." ist!" The shadow of the calomel and of the doctor's awful authority was over me still, so I did not argue the matter, but took his explanation meekly, and with a show of credulity. THE DRAGON-FANG POSSESSED BY CHAPTER OF THE MIRACULOUS DRAGON-FANG. "COM "I thought that the Soul of Wisdom must have known," said Piou-Lu, triumphantly, looking as if he believed firmly in the knowledge of Wei-chang-tze. "The noble commands of Weichang-tze shall be obeyed. You all know," said he, looking round upon the people, "that there are three great and powerful Dragons inhabiting the universe. Lung, or the Dragon of the Sky; Li, or the Dragon of the Sea; and Kiau, or the Dragon of the Marshes. All these "OME, men and women, and little people of Dragons are wise, strong, and terrible. They Tching-tou, come and listen. The small are wondrously formed, and can take any shape and ignoble person who annoys you by his pres- that pleases them. Well, good people, a great ence is the miserable conjuror known as Piou- many moons ago, in the season of spiked grain, Lu. Every thing that can possibly be desired I was following the profession of a barber in the he can give you. Charms to heal dissensions in mean and unmentionable town of Siho, when your noble and illustrious families. Spells by one morning as I was sitting in my shop waitwhich beautiful little people without style may ing for customers, I heard a great noise of tambecome learned Bachelors, and reign high in tams, and a princely palanquin stopped before the palaces of literary composition. Supernat- my door. I hastened, of course, to observe ural red pills, with which you can cure your the honorable Rites toward this new-comer, but elegant and renowned diseases. Wonderful before I could reach the street, a Mandarin, incantations, by which the assassins of any splendidly attired, descended from the palmembers of your shining and virtuous families anquin. The ball on his cap was of a stone can be discovered and made to yield compensa- and color that I had never seen before, and tion, or be brought under the just eye of the three feathers of some unknown bird hung down Brother of the Sun. What is it that you behind his head-dress. He held his hand to want? This mean little conjuror, who now his jaw, and walked into my house with a lordaddresses you, can supply all your charmingly step. I was greatly confused, for I knew and refreshing desires; for he is known not what rank he was of, and felt puzzled how every where as Piou-Lu, the possessor of to address him. He put an end to my embarthe ever-renowned and miraculous Dragon-rassment. Fang!" There was a little dry laugh, and a murmur among the crowd of idlers that surrounded the stage erected by Piou-Lu in front of the Hotel of the Thirty-two Virtues. Fifth-class Mandarins looked at fourth-class Mandarins and smiled, as much as to say, "we who are educated men know what to think of this fellow." But the fourth-class Mandarins looked haughtily at the fifth class, as if they had no business to smile at their superiors. The crowd, however, composed as it was principally of small traders, barbers, porcelaintinkers, and country people, gazed with open mouths upon the conjuror, who, clad in a radi "I am in the house of Piou-Lu, the barber,' he said, in a haughty voice that sounded like the roll of a copper drum amidst the hills. "That disgraceful and ill-conditioned person stands before you,' I replied, bowing as low as I could. "It is well,' said he, seating himself in my operating-chair, while two of his attendants fanned him. 'Piou-Lu, I have the toothache!' "Does your lordship,' said I, 'wish that I should remove your noble and illustrious pain?' "You must draw my tooth,' said he. 'Woe to you if you draw the wrong one!' 666 "It is too much honor,' I replied, "but I will make my abominable and ill-conducted | my sight and breath the Dragon Lung, the atinstruments entice your lordship's beautiful tendants, the palanquin, and the four bearers tooth out of your high-born jaw with much rapidity.' "So I got my big pincers, and my opium-bottle, and opened the strange Mandarin's mouth. Ah! it was then that my low-born and despicable heart descended into my bowels. I should have dropped my pincers from sheer fright if they had not caught by their hooked ends in my wide sleeve. The Mandarin's mouth was all on fire inside. As he breathed, the flames rolled up and down his throat, like the flames that gather on the Yellow Grass Plains in the season of Much Heat. His palate glowed like red-hot copper, and his tongue was like a brass stew-pan that had been on the salt-fire for thirty days. But it was his teeth that affrighted me most. They were a serpent's teeth. They were long and curved inward, and seemed to be made of transparent crystal, in the centre of which small tongues of orange-colored fire leaped up and down out of some cavity in the gums. "Well, dilatory barber,' said the Mandarin, in a horrible tone, while I stood pale and trembling before him, 'why don't you draw my tooth? Hasten, or I will have you sliced lengthwise and fried in the sun.' "Oh! my lord,' said I, terrified at this threat, 'I fear that my vicious and unendurable pincers are not sufficiently strong.' "Slave!' answered he, in a voice of thunder, 'if you do not fulfill my desires, you will not see another moonrise.' "I saw that I would be killed any way, so I might as well make the attempt. I made a dart with my pincers at the first tooth that came, closed them firmly on the crystal fang, and began to pull with all my strength. The Mandarin bellowed like an ox of Thibet. The flames rolled from his throat in such volumes that I thought they would singe my eyebrows. His two attendants, and his four palanquin-bearers came in and put their arms round my waist to help me to pull, and there we tugged for three or four minutes, until at last I heard a report as loud as nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine fire-crackers. The attendants, the palanquin-bearers, and myself all fell flat on the floor, and the crystal fang glittered between the jaws of the pincers. "The Mandarin was smiling pleasantly as I got up from the floor. 'Piou-Lu,' said he, 'you had a narrow escape. You have removed my toothache, but had you failed, you would have perished miserably; for I am the Dragon Lung, who rules the sky and the heavenly bodies, and I am as powerful as I am wise. Take as a reward the Dragon-Fang which you drew from my jaw. You will find it a magical charm with which you can work miracles. Honor your parents, observe the Rites, and live in peace.' had all departed, how and whither I knew not. Thus was it, elegant and refined people of Tching-tou, that this small and evil-minded person who stands before you became possessed of the wonderful Dragon-Fang with which he can work miracles." This story, delivered as it was with much graceful and dramatic gesticulation, and a volubility that seemed almost supernatural, had its effect upon the crowd, and a poor little tailor, named Hang-pou, who was known to be always in debt, was heard to say that he wished he had the Dragon-Fang, wherewith to work miracles with his creditors. But the Mandarins, blue, crystal, and gilt, smiled contemptuously, and said to themselves, "We who are learned men know how to esteem these things." The Mandarin Wei-chang-tze, however, seemed to be of an inquiring disposition, and evinced a desire to continue his investigations. "Supremely visited conjuror," said he to PiouLu, "your story is, indeed, wonderful. To have been visited by the Dragon Lung must have been truly refreshing and enchanting. Though not in the least doubting your marvelous relation, I am sure this virtuous assemblage would like to see some proof of the miraculous power of your Dragon-Fang.” The crowd gave an immediate assent to this sentiment by pressing closer to the platform on which Piou-Lu strutted, and exclaiming with one voice, "The lofty Mandarin says wisely. We would like to behold." Piou-Lu did not seem in the slightest degree disconcerted. His narrow black eyes glistened like the dark edges of the seeds of the watermelon, and he looked haughtily around him. "Is there any one of you who would like to have a miracle performed, and of what nature?" he asked, with a triumphant wave of his arms. "I would like to see my debts paid," murmured the little tailor, Hang-pou. "Oh, Hang-pou!" replied the conjuror, "this unworthy personage is not going to pay your debts. Go home and sit in your shop, and drink no more rice-wine, and your debts will be paid; for Labor is the Dragon-Fang that works miracles for idle tailors!" There was a laugh through the crowd at this sally, because Hang-pou was well known to be fond of intoxicating drinks, and spent more of his time in the street than on his shop-board. "Would any of you like to be changed into a camel?" coutinued Piou-Lu-"say the word, and there shall not be a finer beast in all Thibet!" No one, however, seemed to be particularly anxious to experience this transformation. Perhaps it was because it was warm weather, and camels bear heavy burdens. "So saying, he breathed a whole cloud of fire "I will change the whole honorable assemand smoke from his throat that filled my poor blage into turkey-buzzards if it only agrees," and despicable mansion. The light dazzled and continued the conjuror; "or I will make the the smoke suffocated me, and when I recovered | Lake Tung come up into the town in the shape of a water-melon, and then burst and overflow | lous equilibrium. Immediately this single stem every thing." "But we would all be drowned!" exclaimed Hang-pou, who was cowardly as well as intemperate. began to thicken most marvelously, and instead of the dark shining skin of a bamboo-stick, it seemed gradually to be incased in overlapping rings of a rough bark. Meanwhile a faint rustling noise continued overhead, and when the crowd, attracted by the sound, looked up, instead of the flat disk of cane-work on which Piou-Lu had so wondrously ascended, they beheld a cab "That's true," said Piou-Lu, "but then you need not fear your creditors," and he gave such a dart of his long arm at the poor little tailor, that the wretched man thought he was going to claw him up and change him into some fright-bage-shaped mass of green, which shot forth ful animal. "Well, since this illustrious assembly will not have turkey-buzzards or camels, this weak-minded, ill-shapen personage must work a miracle on himself," said Piou-Lu, descending off of his platform into the street, and bringing with him a little three-legged stool made of bamboo-rods. The crowd retreated as he approached, and even the solemn Wei-chang-tze seemed rather afraid of this miraculous conjuror. Piou-Lu placed the bamboo-stool firmly on the ground, and then mounted upon it. every moment long pointed satiny leaves of the "Elegant and symmetrical bamboo-stool," he said, lifting his arms, and exhibiting something in his hand that seemed like a piece of polished jade-stone-"elegant and symmetrical bamboo-lightfully sweet and palatable to the taste. stool, the justly-despised conjuror, named PiouLu, entreats that you will immediately grow tall, in the name of the Dragon Lung!" Truly the stool began to grow in the presence of the astonished crowd. The three legs of bamboo lengthened and lengthened with great rapidity, bearing Piou-Lu high up into the air. As he ascended he bowed gracefully to the open-mouthed assembly. "That's right! that's right! perfectly bred and very polite people," cried a shrill voice while they were all scrambling for the crimson fruits; "pick fruit while it is fresh, and tea while it is tender. For the sun wilts, and the chills toughen, and the bluest plum blooms only for a day." Every body looked up, and lo! there was Piou-Lu as large as life strutting upon the stage, "It is delightful!" he cried; "the air up waving a large green fan in his hand. While here is so fresh! I smell the tea-winds from the crowd was yet considering this wonderful Fuh-kien. I can see the spot where the heav-reappearance of the conjuror, there was heard a ens and the earth cease to run parallel. I hear the gongs of Pekin, and listen to the lowing of the herds in Thibet. Who would not have an elegant bamboo-stool that knew how to grow?" By this time Piou-Lu had risen to an enormous height. The legs of the slender tripod on which he was mounted seemed like silkworms' threads, so thin were they compared with their length. The crowd began to tremble for Piou-Lu. very great outcry at the end of the street, and a tall thin man in a coarse blue gown came running up at full speed. "Where are my plums, sons of thieves ?" he cried, almost breathless with haste. "Alas! alas! I am completely ruined. My wife will perish miserably for want of food, and my sons will inherit nothing but empty baskets at my death! Where are my plums ?" "Who is it that dares to address the virtuous "Will he never stop?" said a Mandarin with and well-disposed people of Tching-tou after a gilt ball, named Lin. "Oh, yes!" shouted Piou-Lu from the dizzy height of his bamboo-stool. "Oh, yes! this ugly little person will immediately stop. Elegant stool, the poor conjuror entreats you to stop growing; but he also begs that you will afford some satisfaction to this beautifying assemblage down below who have honored you with their inspection." this fashion?" demanded the Mandarin Lin, in a haughty voice, as he confronted the new-comer. The poor man seeing the gilt ball, became immediately very humble, and bowed several times to the Mandarin. "Oh, my lord!" said he, "I am an incapable and undeserving plum-seller, named Liho. I was just now sitting at my stall in a neighboring street selling five cash worth of plums to a The bamboo-stool, with the utmost complai- customer, when suddenly all the plums rose out sance, ceased to lengthen out its attenuated of my baskets as if they had the wings of hawks, limbs, but on the moment experienced another and flew through the air over the tops of the change as terrifying to the crowd. The three houses in this direction. Thinking myself the legs began to approach each other rapidly, and sport of demons, I ran after them, hoping to before the eye could very well follow their mo- catch them, and- Ah! there are my plums," tions, had blended mysteriously and inexplica- he cried, suddenly interrupting himself, and bly into one, the stool still retaining a miracu-making a dart at some of the crimson fruits that the tailor Hang held in his hand intending to carry them home to his wife. "These your plums!" screamed Hang, defending his treasure vigorously. "Mole that you are, did you ever see scarlet plums ?" "This man is stricken by Heaven," said PiouLu, gravely. "He is a fool who hides his plums and then thinks that they fly away. Let some one shake his gown." A porcelain-cobbler who stood near the fruiterer, immediately seized the long blue robe and gave it a lusty pull, when, to the wonder of every body, thousands of the most beautiful plums fell out, as from a tree shaken by the winds of autumn. At this moment a great gust of wind arose in the street, and a pillar of dust mounted up to the very top of the strange tree, that still stood waving its long satiny leaves languidly above the house-tops. For an instant every one was blinded, and when the dust had subsided so as to permit the people to use their eyes again, the wonderful tree had completely vanished, and all that could be seen was a little bamboo-stool flying along the road, where it was blown by the storm. The poor fruiterer, Liho, stood aghast looking at the plums, in which he stood knee deep. The Mandarin, addressing him, said sternly, "Let us hear no more such folly from Liho, otherwise he will get twenty strokes of the stick." "Gather your plums, Liho," said Piou-Lu kindly, "and think this one of your fortunate days; for he who runs after his loses with open mouth does not always overtake them." And as the conjuror descended from his platform it did not escape the sharp eyes of the little tailor Hang, that Piou-Lu exchanged a mysterious signal with the Mandarin Wei-chang-tze. "That ignoble and wrath-deserving personage bows his head before you," answered Piou-Lu, advancing and saluting the Mandarin in accordance with the laws of the Book of Rites. "I hope that you performed your journey hither in great safety and peace of mind," said Wei-chang-tze, gracefully motioning to the conjuror to seat himself on a small blue sofa that stood at a little distance. "When so mean an individual as Piou-Lu is honored by the request of the noble Wei-changtze, good fortune must attend him. How could it be otherwise ?” replied Piou-Lu, seating himself, not on the small blue sofa, but on the satin one which was partly occupied by the Mandarin himself. "Piou-Lu did not send in his card, as the Rites direct," said Wei-chang-tze, looking rather disgusted by this impertinent freedom on the part of the conjuror. "The elegant porter that adorns the noble porch of Wei-chang-tze was fast asleep," answered Piou-Lu, "and Piou-Lu knew that the great Mandarin expected him with impatience." "Yes," said Wei-chang-tze; "I am oppressed by a thousand demons. Devils sleep in my hair, and my ears are overflowing with evil spirit. I can not rest at night, and feel no pleasure in the day; therefore was it that I wished to see you, in hopes that you would, by amusing the demon that inhabits my stomach, induce him to depart." "I will endeavor to delight the respectable demon who lodges in your stomach with my unworthy conjurations," replied Piou-Lu. But first I must go into the garden to gather flowers." "Go," said Wei-chang-tze. "The moon shines, and you will see there very many rare and beautiful plants that are beloved by my daughter Wu." "The moonlight itself can not shine brighter on the lilies than the glances of your lordship's daughter," said the conjuror, bowing and proceeding to the garden. Ah! what a garden it was that Piou-Lu now entered! The walls that surrounded it were lofty, and built of a rosy stone brought from the mountains of Mantchouria. This wall, on whose inner face flowery designs and triumphal processions were sculptured at regular intervals, sustained the long and richly laden shoots of the white magnolia, which spread its large snowy chalices in myriads over the surface. Tamarisks and palms sprang up in various parts of the grounds like dark columns supporting the silvery sky; while the tender and mournful willow drooped its delicate limbs over numberless THE CHAPTER OF THE SHADOW OF THE DUCK. Ir was close on nightfall when Piou-Lu stopped before Wei-chang-tze's house. The lanterns were already lit, and the porter dozed in a bamboo-chair so soundly, that Piou-Lu entered the porch and passed the screen without awaking him. The inner room was dimly lighted by some horn lanterns elegantly painted with hunting-scenes; but despite the obscurity, the conjuror could discover Wei-chang-tze seated at the farther end of the apartment on an inclined couch covered with blue and yellow satin. Along the corridor that led to the women's apartments the shadows lay thick; but Piou-Lu fancied he could hear the pattering of little feet upon the matted floor, and the twinkling of curious eyes illuminating the solemn darkness. Yet, after all, he may have been mistaken, for the corridor opened on a garden wealthy in the rarest flow-fish-ponds, whose waters seemed to repose peaceers, and he may have conceived the silver dripping of the fountain to be the pattering of dainty feet, and have mistaken the moonlight shining on the moist leaves of the lotus for the sparkles of women's eyes. "Has Piou-Lu arrived in my dwelling?" asked Wei-chang-tze from the dim corner in which he lay. fully in the bosom of the emerald turf. The air was distracted with innumerable perfumes, each more beautiful than the other. The blue convolvulus; the crimson ipomea; the prodigal azaleas; the spotted tiger-lilies; the timid and half-hidden jasmine, all poured forth, during the day and night, streams of perfume from the inexhaustible fountains of their chalices. The |