Tuen gazed after him as one fascinated. To her excited imagination he looked as stern and pitiless as the gods she had worshipped in her far-away home, and the splendor of his appearance had awed her. Her father was divided between grief at her fate, and the joy at the thought of the great wealth that would be his on the morrow, for the sum agreed upon was enough to make him comfortable the remainder of his life in that land where necessities cost but little and luxuries are almost unknown.
The family of Niu Tsang spent that night in the open space in front of the temple, and scarce had Tuen fallen asleep when she was awakened by a great commotion. She heard loud cries in the street, mingled with the incessant beating of drums and cymbals, and moving lights and grotesque figures were all around her. Springing to her feet she uttered a piercing shriek, for her first thought was that the Viceroy had come for her.
"Don't let him have me—don't let him have me," she screamed wildly.
"Hush!" her father commanded. "Do you not see that this is the procession of the Rain Dragons? The drought has been very long, and the people try to please the gods, so that we may have cooling showers."
Tuen rubbed her eyes, and slipping close to her mother watched eagerly the strange gathering that now came in sight. In front was a surging crowd, uttering cries of delight, and behind came a throng of men bearing aloft huge, hideous dragons. The heads of these serpents were made of thin paper with lights inside, and their eyes were red as fire, while their wide-open mouths gaped hungrily. Their bodies were made of semi-transparent cloth over hoops of bamboo, and men walked underneath holding them high in the air with sticks which they so moved that the dragons made their way along in undulating heaps, much to the delight of the populace. But Tuen viewed it all very seriously.
"Will the dragons let it rain now, father?" she inquired anxiously.
"Oh, I suppose so," he answered carelessly. "They will if they are ready to, and if they are not—well, it will still be dry. And now, Tuen, you must go to sleep again, for the Viceroy will not want a blinking, stupid girl. He will say that I cheated him."
"Did you, father?" she questioned fearfully, but her father only chuckled and said nothing, and poor Tuen had a new thought to torment her.
With all these things on her mind it was long before she could go to sleep, and when her weary eyes could keep open no longer, she was pursued in her dreams by a horrible dragon with yawning, cruel mouth, and gleaming eyes, and when helplessly she sank down before this awful object,—lo! it turned into the Viceroy.