The boy held out his hands but the old man did not consult the palms: he was interested only in the shape.
"The fire-test," he murmured, "everywhere the fire-test. In four places is the character written as clearly as with the brush. Go, I have told you all."
"But the year of the test, may I not learn the year?"
The old man muttered to himself.
"Yes," he said, "that is also marked. But let me confirm."
Again he shook the three little cash arranging a character at each throw.
"There it is written for you," he remarked, "by the cylic sign. Keng-tzu-nien—the twenty-sixth year of the Emperor. This year is the twenty-fourth. In two years your test will come."
The boy walked away slowly—powerfully impressed by what had been told him. He left unanswered a taunting remark of the soldier with the bundle. He was absorbed by the prospect held out to him. It was his manifest destiny to become associated with foreigners in some way. The mere fact that this coincided with the plan he had already dimly formed so impressed him that a sort of timidity possessed him.
He stopped by the banks of the Imperial Canal, near the scenes of his youthful escapades with the Imperial barges, and threw stones idly at some ducks in the water which sought shelter with a loud quacking. But amusements which formerly used to delight him had lost their power. He ate his evening meal in silence, not telling any one what he had done and he went to sleep in the same uncommunicative mood. He was awake at dawn and yawning greatly, he idled about waiting for the first meal so that he could at least make his escape on a full stomach.
By noon not only had he eaten, but everybody was engaged or away. So very quietly he rolled up his strip of bedding, thrust such spare clothing as he had inside, and got out of the window with the speed and stealth of a cat. Then with his head down he ran by a circuitous route through the fields, not to his own city gate, where he was so well-known, but due south to the next gate where he was a total stranger. Through this one he entered the city and rapidly made his way to the foreign quarter where he had never been.