"Young gentleman," he heard the senior officer interpose with a sardonic
smile: "you shouldn't conceal anything! if he be either hidden in your
home, or if you know his whereabouts, divulge the truth at once; so that
less trouble should fall to our lot than otherwise would. And will we
not then bear in mind your virtue, worthy scion!"

"I positively don't know." Pao-yue time after time maintained. "There
must, I fear, be some false rumour abroad; for I haven't so much as seen
anything of him."

The senior officer gave two loud smiles, full of derision. "There's
evidence at hand," he rejoined, "so if you compel me to speak out before
your venerable father, won't you, young man, have to suffer the
consequences? But as you assert that you don't know who this person is,
how is it that that red sash has come to be attached to your waist?"

When Pao-yue caught this allusion, he suddenly felt quite out of his
senses. He stared and gaped; while within himself, he argued: "How has
he come to hear anything about this! But since he knows all these secret
particulars, I cannot, I expect, put him off in other points; so
wouldn't it be better for me to pack him off, in order to obviate his
blubbering anything more?" "Sir," he consequently remarked aloud, "how
is it that despite your acquaintance with all these minute details, you
have no inkling of his having purchased a house? Are you ignorant of an
essential point like this? I've heard people say that he's, at present,
staying in the eastern suburbs at a distance of twenty li from the city
walls; at some place or other called Tzu T'an Pao, and that he has
bought there several acres of land and a few houses. So I presume he's
to be found in that locality; but of course there's no saying."