I slipped the weapon back in my pocket. I had had an idea that he might attack Suzee, but voice and face showed he was in a different mood.
Suzee clung to my hand on her knees, crying and trembling.
"Go and sit over there," he said peremptorily to her, pointing to the other side of the glade, far enough from us to be out of hearing.
She did not move, only clung and shivered and wept as before.
I bent over her, loosening my hand.
"Do as he says," I whispered; "no harm can come to you while I am here."
Suzee let go my fingers reluctantly and crept away, sobbing, to the opposite edge of the thicket. The old Chinaman motioned me to sit down. I did so, mechanically wondering whether his calmness was a ruse under cover of which he would suddenly stab me. He sat down, too, stiffly, beside me, resting on his heels, and his hard, wrinkled hands supporting his withered face.
"Now," he said, in a thin old voice; "look at me! I am an old man, you are a young one. You are strong, you are well; you are rich too, I think." He looked critically over me. "You have everything that I have not, already. Why do you come here to rob an old man of all he has in this world?"
I felt myself colour with anger. All the blood in my body seemed to rush to my head and stand singing in my ears.
I felt a furious impulse to knock him aside out of my way; but his age and weakness held me motionless.