It was not more than twelve feet square, and in the corner was an apology for a bed.

On this was stretched an old man whose face was sunken, whose eyes were lusterless, whose hand was long and thin and bony, and whose voice was attenuated and pitched in a falsetto key.

The guide said that this old Chinaman was sixty-eight years of age, and that he had had a life of varied experience.

He was a miner by profession, but had spent all his earnings long ago, and was now an object of charity as well as of pity.

Indeed he was the very embodiment of misery, a wretched, woebegone, human being! He had lost one arm in an accident during his mining days.