exceedingly tedious nature with which to imprint the occasion for the
benefit of those who come after, his only request is that the blow
shall be an unhesitating and sufficiently well-directed one."

At these words Yang Hu threw back his cloak to grasp the sword-handle,
when the Mandarin, with his eyes fixed on the naked arm, and evidently
inspired by every manner of conflicting emotions, uttered a cry of
unspeakable wonder and incomparable surprise.

"The Serpent!" he cried, in a voice from which all evenness and
control were absent. "The Sacred Serpent of our Race! O mysterious
one, who and whence are you?"

Engulfed in an all-absorbing doubt at the nature of events, Yang could
only gaze at the form of the serpent which had been clearly impressed
upon his arm from the earliest time of his remembrance, while Ping
Siang, tearing the silk garment from his own arm and displaying
thereon a similar form, continued:

"Behold the inevitable and unvarying birthmark of our race! So it was
with this person's father and the ones before him; so it was with his
treacherously-stolen son; so it will be to the end of all time."

Trembling beyond all power of restraint, Yang removed the mask which
had hitherto concealed his face.

"Father or race has this person none," he said, looking into Ping
Siang's features with an all-engaging hope, tempered in a measure by a
soul-benumbing dread; "nor memory or tradition of an earlier state
than when he herded goats and sought for jade in the southern