six much
astonished Tartar robbers regarding with looks of puzzled wonder a
defiant little Chinese girl, who had evidently darted out of the cave as
he had tumbled in. She was facing the enemy as boldly as had he, and
her little almond eyes fairly danced with mischievous delight at their
perplexity.

At once he recognized the child. She was Woo (the "high-spirited" or
"dauntless one"), the bright young girl whom he had often noticed in the
throng at his mission-house in Tung-Chow,--the little city by the Yellow
River, where her father, the bannerman, held guard at the Dragon Gate.

He was about to call out to the girl to save herself, when, with a
sudden swoop, the Tartar whom he had braced himself to resist, bent
in his saddle and made a dash for the child. But agile little, Woo
was quicker than the Tartar horseman. With a nimble turn and a sudden
spring, she dodged the Tartar's hand, darted under his pony's legs,
and with a shrill laugh of derision, sprang up the sharp incline, and
disappeared in one of the many cliff caves before the now doubly baffled
horsemen could see what had become of her.

With a grunt of discomfiture and disgust, the Tartar riders turned their
ponies' heads and galloped off along the road that skirted the yellow
waters of the swift-flowing Hwang-ho. Then a little yellow face peeped
out of a cave farther up the cliff, a black-haired, tightly braided head
bobbed and twitched with delight, and the next moment the good priest
was heartily thanking his small ally for so skilfully saving him from
threatened capture.

It was a cool September morning in the days of the great Emperor Tai,
twelve hundred and fifty years ago. And a great emperor was Tai-tsung,
though few, if any, of my young readers ever heard his name. His
splendid palace stood in the midst of lovely gardens in the great city
of Chang-an,--that old, old city that for over two thousand years was
the capital of China, and which you can now find in your geographies
under its modern name of Singan-foo. And in the year 635, when our
story opens, the name of Tai-tsung was great and powerful throughout the
length and breadth of Chung Kwoh--the "Middle Kingdom," as the Chinese
for nearly thirty centuries have called their vast country--while the
stories of his fame and power had reached to the western courts of India
and of Persia, of Constantinople, and even of distant Rome.

It was a time of darkness and strife in Europe. Already what hi