When the rescuer stood before her, Tuen said, reprovingly:
"You have done well, but why must you be bought before you would help the drowning man?"
"It is not well to be mixed up in such a case," was his answer. "It might have been said that it was I who killed him, and we who are wise and desire to live long in the land keep our hands off our neighbors."
She uttered an impatient exclamation.
"I do not understand your reasoning."
"Neither do the mandarins," he assured her, "when we are hauled up before them. For that reason they chop off our heads, as that is the easiest way of settling the difficulty. If he had been drowned, there would have been a report that I had been the cause of it, and as he could not have thanked me for my officiousness, and as I could not have proved that he drowned by himself, since I went to help him——" he shrugged his shoulders expressively.
Tuen knit her brows in a puzzled frown, for she knew nothing about the law, but she said, indifferently:
"Well, it does not matter, since the man is still alive. Here is the ring I promised you, and the cash shall be counted out at once. Wang, go with him."
But the boy stood staring at her, as if loath to leave, and such unusual lack of appreciation of cash struck Tuen as marvellous. What a strange creature he was not to be in a hurry for his money! She looked at him attentively, and she saw that he was short and very slender, with a bright, intelligent face, but his water-soaked garments were of the coarse blue cloth worn by the lower class, and his occupation was evidently that of a common sailor. Still looking at him, she said, slowly: