while the rest were sent off to find their friends.

Lo Atsai was promptly handed over to the cook--with no cannibal
intent, but simply to be washed. "The energy and enthusiasm that cook
put into his task," the I.G. would remark when telling the story,
"made the whole operation most ludicrous. Into the river the child was
plunged again and again, our chef holding him stoutly by the hair all
the time as he bobbed up and down between the boats and the unsavoury
corpses sticking there, till he was considered clean enough to be
hauled on board again."

This little child, son of humble parents, was destined to rise far
higher in the world than the prince's son who sat in the place of
honour while Lo Atsai ingratiated himself with the servants in the
confined kitchen quarters of the boat. Because of his whole-hearted
allegiance, the I.G. sent him to school in Hongkong, where he improved
his opportunities so well that the Head Master, reporting on him,
could only say, "He is too conscientious; he will kill himself with
study."

He was truly wearing himself out with diligence, when a rich merchant
took a fancy to him and gave him a good position; then another gave
him a better, so that in a few years he had become a very rich man.

It is nice to add--for the benefit of those who sneer at Chinese
gratitude--that at every new year he would travel, no matter how far
away he might be, to see his old patron and friend. Nor did he ever
grow too grand to go into the kitchen afterwards and gossip with
the servants, sitting down in his sable robes and peacock's feathers
without thought of snobbery, without desire to make himself appear