His profuse and ornamental locks were reduced to a single roughly-plaited coil; his sandals were inelegant and harsh; in place of his many-coloured flowing robes a scanty blue gown clothed his form. He who had been a god was undistinguishable from the labourers of the fields. Only in one thing did the resemblance fail: about his neck he found a weighty block of wood controlled by an iron ring: while they at least were free he was a captive slave.

A shadow on the grass caused him to turn. Sun Wei approached, a knotted thong in one hand, in the other a hoe. He pointed to an unweeded rice-field and with many ceremonious bows pressed the hoe upon Ning as one who confers high honours. As Ning hesitated, Sun Wei pressed the knotted thong upon him until it would have been obtuse to disregard his meaning. Then Ning definitely understood that he had become involved in the workings of very powerful forces, hostile to himself, and picking up the hoe he bent his submissive footsteps in the direction of the laborious rice-field.

iii. THE IN-COMING OF THE YOUTH, TIAN

It was dawn in the High Heaven and the illimitable N'guk, waking to his labours for the day, looked graciously around on the assembled myriads who were there to carry his word through boundless space. Not wanting are they who speak two-sided words of the Venerable One from behind fan-like hands, but when his voice takes upon it the authority of a brazen drum knees become flaccid.

"There is a void in the unanimity of our council," remarked the Supreme, his eye resting like a flash of lightning on a vacant place. "Wherefore tarries Ning, the son of Shin, the Seed-sower?"

For a moment there was an edging of N'guk's inquiring glance from each Being to his neighbour. Then Leou stood audaciously forth.

"He is reported to be engaged on a private family matter," he replied gravely. "Haply his feet have become entangled in a mesh of hair."

N'guk turned his benevolent gaze upon another—one higher in authority.

"Perchance," admitted the superior Being tolerantly. "Such things are. How comes it else that among the earth-creatures we find the faces of the deities—both the good and the bad?"

"How long has he been absent from our paths?"

They pressed another forward—keeper of the Outer Path of the West Expanses, he.

"He went, High Excellence, in the fifteenth of the earth-ruler Chun, whom your enlightened tolerance has allowed to occupy the lower dragon throne for twoscore years, as these earthlings count. Thus and thus—"

"Enough!" exclaimed the Supreme. "Hear my iron word. When the buffoon-witted Ning rises from his congenial slough this shall be his lot: for sixty thousand ages he shall fail to find the path of his return, but shall, instead, thread an aimless flight among the frozen ambits of the outer stars, carrying a tormenting rain of fire at his tail. And Leou, the Whisperer," added the Divining One, with the inscrutable wisdom that marked even his most opaque moments, "Leou shall meanwhile perform Ning's neglected task."

For five and twenty years Ning had laboured in the fields of Sun Wei with a wooden collar girt about his neck, and Sun Wei had prospered. Yet it is to be doubted whether this last detail deliberately hinged on the policy of Leou or whether Sun Wei had not rather been drawn into some wider sphere of destiny and among converging lines of purpose. The ways of the gods are deep and sombre, and water once poured out will flow as freely to the north as to the south. The wise kowtows acquiescently whatever happens and thus his face is to the ground. "Respect the deities," says the imperishable Sage, "but do not become familiar with them." Sun Wei was clearly wrong.

To Ning, however, standing on a grassy space on the edge of a flowing river, such thoughts do not extend. He is now a little hairy man of gnarled appearance, and his skin of a colour and texture like a ripe lo-quat. As he stands there, something in the outline of the vista stirs the retentive tablets of his mind: it was on this spot that he first encountered Hia, and from that involvement began the cycle of his unending ill.

As he stood thus, implicated with his own inner emotions, a figure emerged from the river at its nearest point and, crossing the intervening sward, approached. He had the aspect of being a young man of high and dignified manner, and walked with the air of one accustomed to a silk umbrella, but when Ning looked more closely, to see by his insignia what amount of reverence he should pay, he discovered that the youth was destitute of the meagrest garment.

"Rise, venerable," said the stranger affably, for Ning had prostrated himself as being more prudent in the circumstances. "The one before you is only Tian, of obscure birth, and himself of no particular merit or attainment. You, doubtless, are of considerably more honourable lineage?"

"Far from that being the case," replied Ning, "the one who speaks bears now the commonplace name of Lieu, and is branded with the brand of Sun Wei. Formerly, indeed, he was a god, moving in the Upper Space and known to the devout as Ning, but now deposed by treachery."

"Unless the subject is one that has painful associations," remarked Tian considerately, "it is one on which this person would willingly learn somewhat deeper. What, in short, are the various differences existing between gods and men?"

"The gods are gods; men are men," replied Ning. "There is no other difference."

"Yet why do not the gods now exert their strength and raise from your present admittedly inferior position one who is of their band?"

"Behind their barrier the gods laugh at all men.