“We can’t go after it tonight.” Sig was walking from the bed to door and back again, as if he could think better when he was on the move. “Not tonight. At least I couldn’t get away to try that. I can’t even stay long here, the folks were talking homework when I left.”

Ras and Artie were nodding in complete agreement.

“So we’ll just have to leave it until after school tomorrow and hope that they don’t come to clear things out before then. But we’ll go after it together—after school—agree on that, you guys?”

They answered “yes,” almost together. Then Sig turned to Kim. “We want to hear your story, all of it. Maybe we haven’t much time tonight, but tell us what you can.”

So Kim began to talk, trying to make vivid to them the mistake of Ma Su, the cleverness and courage of Chuko Liang. However, there was a lot he feared he could not make them understand. When he had done Ras was leaning forward, staring at Kim, as if he saw not the other boy at all but rather what he had been describing. And Sig, back on the bed beside Artie, and Artie himself were spellbound.

“That Ma Su”—Ras spoke first—”was he ever stupid! Bet his head on being right and then went out and proved how wrong he was!”

“I don’t understand—really—why. Chuko Liang thought he had been wrong and why he wanted to give up everything,” Artie said slowly. “He—he really beat this Ssuma, didn’t he? And did it without fighting, too. Why did he say he had failed? Oh, I know what you say he said, that he made a mistake in picking the wrong guy for the job, so he was responsible. But that’s being pretty hard on himself—at least I think so.”

“It was the way they believed, the old Chinese.” Kim tried to make it clear. “They had a code they had to live up to. A lot of men didn’t, but the heroes tried the hardest and sometimes they did.”

“Yes,” Sig broke in. “Like Sigurd refusing to touch the treasure even when he had a right to it, after he killed Fafnir! He knew the treasure changed the man who took it, as it did Mimir, so he wouldn’t touch it.”

“What happened to Sigurd?” Kim demanded.