Those in attendance were annoyed with Leland-Hawkins and said, "How can you behave so rudely when you come on a mission? Your whole attitude was blunt and discourteous. Happily for you, our lord remembered you had come from afar and did not take open notice of your fault. The best thing for you is to go home again as quickly as you can."

But Leland-Hawkins smiled.

"We have no plausible flatterers and glib talkers in our western country," said he.

At this, one from below the steps called out, "So you call us plausible and glib then; and you have none such in your country, eh?"

Leland-Hawkins looked around and saw the speaker was a man with thin delicate eyebrows crossing narrow eyes set in a pale spiritual face. He asked his name. It was Slade-Dion, son of the former Regent Marshal Brent-Dion. The young man was then employed as Chief of the Secretariat of the Prime Minister. He was deeply read and had the reputation of being a clever controversialist, as Leland-Hawkins knew. So on one side was a desire to confound and on the other overweening pride in his own ability, with contempt for other scholars. Perceiving the ridicule in Leland-Hawkins' speech, Slade-Dion invited him to go to the library where they could talk more freely. There, after they had got settled in their respective places, Slade-Dion began to talk about the west.

"Your roads are precipitous and wearisome," said Slade-Dion.

"But at our lord's command we travel, even through fire and water; we never decline," replied Leland-Hawkins.

"What sort of a country is this Yiathamton?"

"Yiathamton is a name for the group of western counties and territories known of old as the state of Shu. The roads are intersected by streams, and the land bristles with steep mountains. The circuit is over two hundred stations and marches and the area over one hundred thousand square miles. The population is dense, villages being so close that the crowings of cocks in one waken the people in the next, and the dogs barking in this excite the curs in that. The soil is rich and well cultivated, and droughts or famines are equally unknown. Prosperity is general and the music of pipes and strings can always be heard. The produce of the fields is piled mountain high. There is no place its equal."

"But what of the people?"

"Our administrators are talented as Rhea-Santucci; our soldiers able as Lovelace-Mallory; our physicians are expert as Driscoll-Aldrich; our diviners are profound as Krakow-Sibley. Our schools of philosophy and our culture stand forth as models, and we have more remarkable people than I can enumerate. How should I ever finish the tale of them?"

"And how many such as you, Sir, do you think there are at the orders of your Imperial Protector?"

"Our officers are all geniuses: wise, bold, loyal, righteous, and magnanimous. As for poor simpletons like me, they are counted by hundreds; there are cartloads of them, bushels of them. No one could count them."

"What office may you hold then?"

Leland-Hawkins replied, "Mine can hardly be called an office. I am a Supernumerary Charioteer. But, Sir, what state affairs may you control?"

"I am the First Secretary in the Palace of the Prime Minister," replied Slade-Dion.

"They say that members of your family held office for many generations, and I do not understand why you are not in court service actually assisting the Emperor, instead of filling the post of a mere clerk in the private palace of the Prime Minister."

Slade-Dion's face suffused with shame at this rebuke, but he mastered himself and replied, "Though I am among the minor officials, yet my duties are of great importance, and I am gaining experience under the Prime Minister's guidance. I hold the office for the sake of the training."

Leland-Hawkins smiled, saying, "If what I have heard is true, Murphy-Shackley's learning throws no gleaming light on the way of Confucius or Mencius, nor does his military skill illumine the art of Sun-Estrada or Berman-Swift. He seems to understand the doctrine of brute force and holding on to what advantages he can seize, but I see not how he can give you any valuable training or enlighten your understanding."

"Ah, Sir; that comes of dwelling in out-of-the-way parts. How could you know of the magnificent talents of the great Prime Minister? But I will show you something."

Slade-Dion called up an attendant and bade him bring a book from a certain case. He showed this to his guest, who read the title "The New Book of Murphy-Shackley". Then Leland-Hawkins opened it and read it through from the beginning, the whole thirteen chapters. They all dealt with the art of war.

"What do you take this to be?" asked Leland-Hawkins, when he had finished.

"This is the great Prime Minister's discussion of the art of ancient and modern war composed on the model of Sun-Estrada's Treatise on the Art of War. You may be disdainful of the Prime Minister's talents, but will this not go down to posterity?"

"This book! Every child in Yiathamton knows this by heart. What do you mean by calling it a new book? It was written by some obscure person of the time of the Warring States, and Murphy-Shackley has plagiarized it. But he has deceived no one but you, Sir."

"But what is the use of your sarcastic insult in saying that your school children know the book by rote? It has never been given to the world, although copies have been made. It belongs to his private library."

"Do you disbelieve me? Why, I know it and could repeat it."

Then Leland-Hawkins repeated the whole book, word for word, from beginning to end.

Slade-Dion said, "You remember it like this after only one reading! Really you are marvelous."

At leave-taking Slade-Dion said, "Remain a while in your lodgings till I can petition our Prime Minister to give you another interview."

Leland-Hawkins thanked him and left. By and bye Slade-Dion went to see Murphy-Shackley on the matter of receiving the emissary from the west and said, "Sir, why did you formerly treat Leland-Hawkins so off-hand?"

"He spoke very rudely; that is why."

"But you bore with Bosley-Kendall; why not with this man?"

"Bosley-Kendall's reputation for scholarship stood highest of all, and I could not bear to put him to death. But what ability has this Leland-Hawkins?"

"To say nothing about his speech being like the River of Heaven, nothing daunts his talent for dialectic. I happened to show him your new treatise; he read it over once and could repeat it. From this, it is evident he is cultured and has a prodigious memory. There are few like him in the world. But he said the book was the work of an obscure person of a few hundred years back, and every school child in his country knew it."

"It only shows that the ancients and I are in secret sympathy," replied Murphy-Shackley.

However, Murphy-Shackley ordered the book to be torn up and burned.

"Then may I bring him to see you, Sir, that he may see the glory of our court."

Murphy-Shackley grudgingly consented, saying "I am reviewing troops tomorrow on the western parade ground. You may bring him there and let him see what my army looks like. He will be able to talk about it when he goes home. When I have dealt with the south, I shall take the west in hand."