He is making sacrifice before you take him." "Well, I'm blasted," said Jonas Billings from the crowd.

"Chinese dukes, eh! What's it all about ?" "Reg'lar hocus-pocus," remarked the vagabond brother of Rigby the chemist.
At that moment little coloured lights suddenly showed in the darkness of the root-house, and there was the tinkling of a bell.

Then a voice seemed calling, but softly, with a long, monotonous, thrilling note.
"Many may not come," said the Chinaman at the door to the Coroner, as he turned and entered the low doorway.
A minute afterwards the two constables held back the crowd from the doorway of the root-house, from the threshold of which a few wooden steps descended to the ground inside.
A strange sight greeted the eyes of those permitted to enter.
The root-house had been transformed.

What had been a semi-underground place composed of scantlings, branches of trees and mother earth, with a kind of vaulted roof, had been made into a sort of Chinese temple.

All round the walls were hung curtains of black and yellow, decorated with dragons in gold, and above, suspended by cords at the four corners, was a rug or banner of white ornamented with a great tortoise--the sacred animal of Chinese religion--with gold eyes and claws.