Monsieur Brin was vastly entertained. The children's antics were very droll, and Monsieur was a man of sentiment.
"My word!" he said. "Here is something at last for the readers of the Soleil. I have no victories of war to write; I write of a victory of peace; how a young Englishman has won the hearts of all a street of Chinese; how to them he is no longer foreign devil but sweet-stuff saint. Eh? How became you so great a friend?"
"Oh, it is very simple. I took a fancy one day to a little toddler; picked him up out of the way of a boisterous pig, and gave him a sweet to comfort him. Other children were looking on; next time I came this way a group of them stood with their fingers in their mouths and their eyes on my pockets. I flung them a sweet or two; they picked them up and scampered away as though half-scared; but they were on the watch for me after that, and now, as you see, it has become an institution. They have very easy-going schoolmasters here; as soon as my nose is seen at the street end the word is given and out they troop, and the elders know the sounds and come to see the fun. They are all very good friends of mine."
Leaving the narrow streets, they came at length to the outer gate, guarded jointly by several sleepy Chinese soldiers and a Russian sentry. Jack was well known, and the two riders passed through without difficulty.
Having a little business to settle with Mr. Wang senior, Jack had offered, before Wang Shih left Mr. Brown's house in the small hours of that morning, to ride out and inform the family of his escape. A ride of some fifteen miles brought the two within sight of the farm. It was a brick building of one story, like all Manchurian houses, with cow-byres, pig-sties, and poultry-houses clinging to the wall. The farmstead was surrounded by lofty wooden palings, and Monsieur Brin's attention was attracted by two fantastic warlike figures roughly daubed in red and green on either side of the great gate.
"Oh!" said Jack, in reply to his question, "they're supposed to scare away evil spirits."
"Hé! Are not the dogs enough?"
The appearance of the two strangers was hailed by a rush of dogs, large and small, yelping and barking fiercely, but without malice. The noise brought the inmates to the door: an old Chinaman and his wife, and two girls of eighteen or thereabouts, whose regular features, soft brown eyes, and delicately ruddy complexion made an instant impression upon the Frenchman. He doffed his hat with the most elegant and graceful ease, and was not disconcerted when this unaccustomed mode of salutation set the girls giggling. The mistress led the visitors into the best room, lofty, airy, clean, with paper windows; along one side a broad platform some thirty inches from the floor. This was the k'ang, a hollow structure containing a flue warmed by the smoke and hot air from the kitchen-fire; it served as a table by day and a bed by night. A little graven image occupied a tinselled niche; and, the kitchen-fire not being required in hot weather, a kettle stood on a small brazier, boiling water for the indispensable tea.
The old people were greatly distressed at the disgrace that had befallen their only son; still more at his approaching fate, for to die without a male child to honour one's ashes is the worst of ills to a Chinaman. They were not aware of his escape; but when Jack told them that he was now at large, and had gone to join the great Chunchuse chief Ah Lum, they all, parents and girls, clapped their hands, feeling now secure against ill-treatment by the Chinese officials. The chief would send word from his head-quarters to his agent in Moukden that Wang Shih was under his protection, and the terror in which the brigand was held was so great that the farmer's family would remain unmolested.
Jack asked where was the encampment of the Chunchuse band. It varied, said the old man. To avoid capture by the Russians, the chief frequently shifted his quarters. His band was constantly on the move between Kirin and the Shan-yan-alin mountains, going so swiftly and secretly that no one knew where it would turn up next. One day it would be on the Hun-ho; a detachment of Cossacks would be sent to cut it off, only to find that it had disappeared. Two or three days later it might be heard of several hundred li away, on the Sungari.