"My dear young man," he replied, "they're remarkably like you and me."

After a pause, he added soberly:--

"Images? Yes, you're right, sir. So was Adam. The same clay, the same
image." His deep voice altered, his eyes lighted shrewdly, as he turned
to Heywood. "This is an unexpected pleasure."

"Quite," said the young man, readily. "If you don't mind, padre, you
made Number One talk. Fast bowling, and no wides. But we really came for
something else." In a few brief sentences, he pictured the death in the
shop.--So, like winking! The beggar gave himself the iron, fell down,
and made finish. Now what I pieced out, from his own bukhing, and the
merchant's, was this:--

"The dead man was one Aú-yöng, a cormorant-fisher. Some of his best
birds died, he had a long run of bad luck, and came near starving. So he
contrived, rather cleverly, to steal about a hundred catties of Fuh-kien
hemp. The owner, this merchant, went to the elders of Aú-yöng's
neighborhood, who found and restored the hemp, nearly all. Merchant lets
the matter drop. But the neighbors kept after this cormorant fellow,
worked one beastly squeeze or another, ingenious baiting, devilish--Rot!
you know their neighborhoods better than I! Well, they pushed him
down-hill--poor devil, showing that's always possible, no bottom! He
brooded, and all that, till he thought the merchant and the Jesus
religion were the cause of all. So bang he goes down the
pole,--gloriously drunk,--marches into his enemy's shop, and uses that
knife. The joke is now on the merchant, eh?"

"Just a moment," begged the padre. "One thread I don't follow--the