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and severely dealt with.
'So, for the next week or ten days, the outcasts held a family picnic, leading a Bohemian kind of life, with crowds of Chinese coming again and again to rejoice over their discomforts and misfortunes. The natives kept this unfortunate family in a state of continual terror, not knowing whether at any moment they and their belongings might be found floating on the river below.
'Finally, by a bribe to some passing boatmen they got a letter conveyed to the consul at Hankow. The vice-consul was despatched to inquire into the matter. A modus vivendi of some kind - I do not remember what - was patched up, and his Reverence, with his furniture very much out of repair after ten days' exposure to sun, wind and rain, was translated to-----, where I met him.
'Here he conducted himself more peaceably, but whether his damaged reputation had preceded him, or whether people took a natural dislike to him, I cannot say; anyhow, he soon became unpopular, and confined himself a good deal to the house. Then it was that another original and novel idea for the propagation of the gospel developed itself.
'I have already said that he belonged to an American Scotch mission, so he considered himself entitled to dress his two children - about eight and nine years of age - in full Highland costume. How he ever fabricated two complete Highland dresses away in the far interior of China, I am at a loss to imagine; but he did so.
'One morning, to the amazement and surprise of the natives, who wondered what new josses were being exhibited so suddenly and unexpectedly, two children appeared at one of the upper windows of his house in brilliant tartan, each armed with a bamboo fishing-rod and line, a bent pin doing duty for a hook on which was fixed a religious tract, which was slowly lowered among the gaping crowd below.
'The Chinese, curious to see what this wonderfully dressed joss had sent them, unhooked the tract, and, being of too independent a nature to accept it for nothing, passed the bent pin through the hole in the centre of a few cash, which was immediately drawn up, and another