"May your flesh be jellied and your bones splintered," was Allister's discourteous shot into the trumpet. "May your ancestors"
"Harmless is the bluster of the paper tiger," interrupted Ssu Yin, with a playful malice. He went on in a more kindly vein: "A gem cannot be polished without friction, or a man perfected without adversity. The friction has been thine, Elder Brother, even as it is written; also the adversity; but a wise man also has said that the gods cannot help him who loses opportunities."
"Oh, drop the classics, Ssu Yin, and tell me what you're driving at!"
"The Elder Brother must set his feet unto new paths, or he will learn to walk soon in the Eternal Shades."
"I'm through, Ssu Yin. No more chandoo for me. Tomorrow"
"The man who overestimates himself is like a rat falling into a scale and weighing himself."
Allister was stung by the contempt of his host's words, but he feared to retort. His sense of need came more fully upon him. His head swam, leadenly, and his tongue was thick.
"The pipe, Sea Yin—only once more. And tomorrow"
"Spawn of frog begets but frog; the wise man does not give his cloak to the stealer of his coat; and to cure a habit by indulging it is to push a stone with an egg."
"No, Ssu Yin, I mean it this time"
"Dragging the lake for the moon in the water, adding fuel to put out a fire," ran the relentless river of Ssu Yin's scornful proverbs.
Nevertheless, Ssu Yin arose and led the way to the sleeping-room. He set forth within Allister's reach a bamboo pipe with black tassels and a mouthpiece of jade, lighted the lamp, and from a receptacle within his capacious sleeve jealously produced three miniature cylinders of amber-hued opium.
Cynically, Ssu Yin observed the trembling hands of the white man as he held one of the precious morsels over the flame, watched it sizzle, dissolve, evaporate. He waited until the operation thrice had been performed, each puff sending Allister nearer to the paradise of drugs, and stood gazing at the young man's emaciated features long after the squalid room had been translated, for Allister, into a pearly grotto through which he stepped forth on the winged feet of inexhaustible youth into a world of unimaginable color, transcendent beauty and unspeakable delight.
"A just debt—a just debt is mine," muttered Ssu Yin, solemnly, "and it is thus that I have paid. For this have I merited no less than the reproach of the gods."
WHEN Allister returned again from the lotus fields of Elysium, his eyes were more fevered, his yellowed skin closer drawn over cadaverous cheeks, and his weakness even greater than before.
This was the tomorrow of which he had spoken to Ssu Yin.
But what had any Oriental tomorrow to do with him? Here there were promises only of more lethal hours that did not relieve so much as they accented the deepening miseries leading toward an indubitable end.
Tomorrow
He sprang up suddenly, the effort startling his heart into wild uncertainties. The recurrence of a feeling of resentment, long nourished, supported him.
"Ssu Yin, the superstitions dog—rich—preaching to me in nasty proverbs and feeding me this spawn of hell when he might be sending me home!"
The thought took possession of him, made him stealthy and steel-nerved. He would take the money—Ssu Yin owed it to him, the heathen ingrate; this time he would have a share in
