I turned to Wan Lee, who was surveying them with a calm satisfaction,
and demanded an explanation. To my horror he pointed to an empty
mail-bag in the corner, and said, "Postman he say, 'No lettee, John; no
lettee, John.' Postman plentee lie! Postman no good. Me catchee lettee
last night allee same!" Luckily it was still early: the mails had not
been distributed. I had a hurried interview with the postmaster; and
Wan Lee's bold attempt at robbing the United States mail was finally
condoned by the purchase of a new mail-bag, and the whole affair thus
kept a secret.

If my liking for my little Pagan page had not been sufficient, my duty
to Hop Sing was enough, to cause me to take Wan Lee with me when I
returned to San Francisco after my two years' experience with "The
Northern Star." I do not think he contemplated the change with pleasure.
I attributed his feelings to a nervous dread of crowded public streets
(when he had to go across town for me on an errand, he always made a
circuit of the outskirts), to his dislike for the discipline of the
Chinese and English school to which I proposed to send him, to his
fondness for the free, vagrant life of the mines, to sheer wilfulness.
That it might have been a superstitious premonition did not occur to me
until long after.

Nevertheless it really seemed as if the opportunity I had long looked
for and confidently expected had come,--the opportunity of placing Wan
Lee under gently restraining influences, of subjecting him to a life and
experience that would draw out of him what good my superficial care and
ill-regulated kindness could not reach. Wan Lee was placed at the school
of a Chinese missionary,--an intelligent and kind-hearted clergyman,
who had shown great interest in the boy, and who, better than all, had
a wonderful faith in him. A home was found for him in the family of a