I.

THE ADVENT OF TEN MOON.

LESTER BALDWIN, storekeeper down at Sloan's Camp, arrived one morning at a Chinese fishing-village on the shore of the wide Pacific Ocean, in search of a few more hands for the railroad.

Instead of inquiring for the "bossee man" of the village, it was, strangely enough, a woman, Choy Susan, to whom he directed himself. Choy Susan enjoyed in the Celestial communitypartly through innate force of character, and partly as the only one who had mastered the English speech, and thus made herself of invaluable use in business dealings with the outside world a position quite unusual with her sex.

For the moment she was not at home. Nor was her partner, Yuen Wa, a superaLnuated old man whom she employed to tend shop for her during her frequent absences, which often included even bold excursions to the fishing-grounds.

As the storekeeper stood knocking at her door, he may be described as a person of lank figure, "sandy-complected," as he himself would have said, with a sandy "goatee," and a slight cast in one eye. He had, when he spoke, a chronic huskiness of voice. He was known to his friends not at all as Lester, but "Yank," or Yankee, Baldwin.

A large green parrot, the unsociable "Tong," hung out in a wooden cage beside the door, woke up, and delivered a torrent of jargon, probably abuse, in response to his knock.

"Quack-a-lee! cack-a-lee-lee-ee! whoooosh! You're another," returned Yank Baldwin, in a facetious mood, by way of a reply in kind, and went on further in his search.

The village had a deserted look that day. Even some doors which had stood ajar on the storekeeper's first approach now churlishly closed. There was no one near the tawdry little out-of-doors theatre, no one at the fane of Hop Wo; there were no smooth polls being scraped at the barber-shop. A person at the smoky little cabaret, with its heavy wooden tables, who was engaged in preparing a confection of hog's fat and sweetmeats for the noonday meal, answered shortly to inquiries only "Twel' o'clock!" and could not be induced to say another word.

"I'd like to wring" — began Yank Baldwin, upon this, indignantly; but then, "Oh, well, what's the use!"

He saw some men at a distance, on the beach, by a smoking tar-kettle among the bowlders, apparently mending a boat. He was betaking himself thither, and had reached a point where a grotesque idol, a deity of fishermen, was squatted on a flat rock among the dwellings, when