As the judge sat down on a clothes box, his First Lady said: "You shouldn't have gone outside! You are wet through and through!"

"I tried to help Tao Gan and the coachmen to fix that broken axle," he said with a wan smile, "but it's no use; it'll have to be replaced. Anyway, the horses are tired and the storm is only beginning. We'll stay the night in the Morning Cloud Monastery. That's the only inhabited place in this neighbourhood."

"Do you mean that huge red building with the green-tiled roofs we saw high up on the mountain slope, when we passed here two weeks ago?" his second wife asked.

The judge nodded.

"You won't be too uncomfortable there," he said. "It's the largest Taoist monastery in the entire province, and many people visit it during the religious feasts. I am sure they'll have good guest quarters."

He took the towel his third wife gave him and tried to rub his beard and whiskers dry.

"We'll manage all right!" his First Lady resumed. "During our holiday in the capital we were so spoilt in your uncle's mansion that a little hardship won't matter! And it'll be interesting to see what that old monastery looks like inside!"

"Perhaps there are spooks!" his Third Lady said with a smile. She moved her shapely shoulders in an exaggerated shudder. Judge Dee knitted his thick eyebrows.

"There isn't much to see," he said slowly. "It's just an old monastery. We'll have the evening meal in our room and go to bed early. If we leave tomorrow morning at dawn, as soon as the grooms of the monastery have replaced the axle, we'll be back in Han-yuan before the noon rice."

"I wonder how the children have been getting along!" his second wife said in a worried voice.