ly than before. "I hate
this great emperor, as men do wrongfully call him, and I hate the young
Prince Kaou. May Lung Wang, the god of the dragons, dash them both
beneath the Yellow River ere yet they leave its banks this day."

At this terrible wish on the lips of a girl, the good master very
nearly forgot even his most valuable precept--never to be surprised. He
regarded his defiant young companion in sheer amazement.

"Have a care, have a care, my daughter!" he said at length. "The blessed
Saint James telleth us that the tongue is a little member, but it can
kindle a great fire. How mayst thou hope to say such direful words
against the Son of Heaven(1) and live?"

(1) "The Son of Heaven" is one of the chief titles of the Chinese
emperor.

"The Son of Heaven killed the emperor, my father," said the child.

"The emperor thy father!" Thomas the Nestorian almost gasped in this
latest surprise. "Is the girl crazed or doth she sport with one who
seeketh her good?" And amazement and perplexity settled upon his face.

"The Princess Woo is neither crazed nor doth she sport with the master,"
said the girl. "I do but speak the truth. Great is Tai-tsung. Whom he
will he slayeth, and whom he will he keepeth alive." And then she told
the astonished priest that the bannerman of the Dragon Gate was not
her father at all. For, she said, as she had lain awake only the night
before, she had heard enough in talk between the bannerman and his wife
to learn her secret--how that she was the only daughter of the rightful
emperor, the Prince Kung-ti, whose guardian and chief adviser the
present emperor had been; how this trusted protector had made away with
poor Kung-ti in order that he might usurp the throne; and how she, the
Princess Woo, had been flung into the swift Hwang-ho, from the turbid
waters of which she had been rescued by the bannerman of the Dragon
Gate.

"This may or may not be so," Thomas the Nestorian said, uncertain
whether or not to credit the girl's surprising story; "but even were it
true, my daughter, how couldst thou right thyself? What can a girl hope
to do?"

The young princess drew up her small form proudly. "Do?" she cried in
brave tones; "I can do much, wise O-lo-pun, girl though I am! Did not
a girl save the divine books of Confucius, when the great Emperor
Chi-Hwang-ti did command the burning of all the books in the empire?
Did not a girl--though but a soothsayer's daughter--raise the outlaw Liu
Pang