"Did you notice how many men were on board?"
"About five or six," said the old man.
"That agrees," said Ling, "with what I already know."
He remained silent for a moment, and then suddenly grasped Frank by an arm and thrust him through the door.
"Come!" he cried. "We have no time to lose."
The next moment Frank Armitage was on the road again, and throughout the early hours of the morning he continued to travel northward, in company with his grim and silent captor. Once the boy dared to speak, asking Ling where they were going; but he was at once ordered to hold his tongue.
"You need what breath you have," observed the Honanese. "I am not here to answer questions."
There was more than a little truth in the first remark, for the boy was obliged to keep up a steady jog-trot mile after mile, with never a halt or a rest by the wayside.
Presently they gained the crest of a chain of low-lying hills. The moonlight was sufficient to enable them to see for a considerable distance. Before them lay a valley--so far as Frank could make out--exceedingly fertile and picturesque, in which was a tall, thin tower, somewhat resembling a short factory chimney, except that at the top there was a narrow, circular balcony protected both from the rain and the powerful rays of the sun by one of those queer-shaped, overhanging roofs that are peculiar to Southern China.
Frank knew at a glance that this was the tower from which, in days gone by, it had been the custom of the Cantonese to throw little children, whose existence had grown irksome to their parents. At one time this barbarous and terrible custom was prevalent in the Middle Kingdom, until finally even the Chinese themselves revolted against the laws that permitted such a crime.