"With these words the richly-clad stranger led the way through a
narrow woodland path, closely followed by Sen, to whom the attraction
of the promised reward--a larger sum, indeed, than he had ever
possessed--was sufficiently alluring to make him determined that the
other should not, for the briefest possible moment, pass beyond his
sight.

"Not to withhold that which Sen was entirely ignorant of until a later
period, it is now revealed that the person in question was the
official Provider of Diversions and Pleasurable Occupations to the
sacred and illimitable Emperor, who was then engaged in making an
unusually extensive march through the eight Provinces surrounding his
Capital--for the acute and well-educated will not need to be reminded
that Nanking occupied that position at the time now engaged with.
Until his providential discovery of Sen, the distinguished Provider
had been immersed in a most unenviable condition of despair, for his
enlightened but exceedingly perverse-minded master had, of late,
declined to be in any way amused, or even interested, by the simple
and unpretentious entertainment which could be obtained in so
inaccessible a region. The well-intentioned efforts of the followers
of the Court, who engagingly endeavoured to divert the Imperial mind
by performing certain feats which they remembered to have witnessed on
previous occasions, but which, until the necessity arose, they had
never essayed, were entirely without result of a beneficial order.
Even the accomplished Provider's one attainment--that of striking
together both the hands and the feet thrice simultaneously, while
leaping into the air, and at the same time producing a sound not
unlike that emitted by a large and vigorous bee when held captive in
the fold of a robe, an action which never failed to throw the