The master looked at him with approval.
"Show caution," he remarked. "It is wise to show caution now—"
Outside the house Wang the Ninth found all the servants already gathered together discussing what had happened.
"San-mao-tzu—third-class barbarians," they repeated sullenly. "This is a nice business for us who only earn a bare living."
They were plainly frightened. Those who had wives and children in distant parts of the city spoke of the necessity of going. If this suspense continued, the majority would certainly flee. Only the men from the South would not move. For they were strangers, too, that is quasi-foreigners, who feared the mob because of their different speech.
Presently, in a day or two, some foreign soldiers arrived. But there were not many. It was said that thousands might soon come. That night, however, a secret exodus began from all native households scattered throughout the foreign quarter. In carts and on foot the people hastened silently away, abandoning their homes because of their location. The foreigner was becoming accursed—it was not good to continue living near him. The sombre depression grew as before a great disaster. A sudden noise would make every one cease work to see what had happened. Discipline was so relaxed that Wang the Ninth was permitted to go and come as he chose, even the head-groom never chiding him. So the thing developed, slowly yet rather fast, the elements of evil gathering from afar under cover of the dark.
CHAPTER XIV
One night a great, sullen roar reached him through the open stable-doors in confused waves of sound which ebbed and flowed as though some monster were being tortured in fits and starts.
Full of awe he lay listening. On the cobblestones outside he could hear his mates stirring uneasily. They were talking to one another in low, guttural voices that were impossible to understand. In his drowsy state he only paid vague attention to them. Then, just as his sleepiness was conquering him, words reached him which shot him to his feet as if they had been a loud explosion.