the line found no welcome in the eyes of the fisherfolk. The men and
women whispered together. The children stole timidly back among their
elders, and bristling dogs fawned up to him and sniffed suspiciously.

"I bore thee, Nam-Bok, and I gave thee suck when thou wast little,"
Bask-Wah-Wan whimpered, drawing closer; "and shadow though thou be, or
no shadow, I will give thee to eat now."

Nam-Bok made to come to her, but a growl of fear and menace warned
him back. He said something in a strange tongue which sounded like
"Goddam," and added, "No shadow am I, but a man."

"Who may know concerning the things of mystery?" Opee-Kwan demanded,
half of himself and half of his tribespeople. "We are, and in a breath
we are not. If the man may become shadow, may not the shadow become
man? Nam-Bok was, but is not. This we know, but we do not know if this
be Nam-Bok or the shadow of Nam-Bok."

Nam-Bok cleared his throat and made answer. "In the old time long ago,
thy father's father, Opee-Kwan, went away and came back on the heels
of the years. Nor was a place by the fire denied him. It is said ..."
He paused significantly, and they hung on his utterance. "It is said,"
he repeated, driving his point home with deliberation, "that Sipsip,
his _klooch_, bore him two sons after he came back."

"But he had no doings with the off-shore wind," Opee-Kwan retorted.
"He went away into the heart of the land, and it is in the nature of
things that a man may go on and on into the land."

"And likewise the sea. But that is neither here nor there. It is said