s order, appeared at court.

The name of this Huan Dschuang had originally been Tschen. His father
had passed the highest examinations during the reign of the preceding
emperor, and had been intrusted with the office of district mandarin
on the Yangtze-kiang. He set out with his wife for this new district,
but when their ship reached the Yellow River it fell in with a band of
robbers. Their captain slew the whole retinue, threw father Tschen
into the river, took his wife and the document appointing him
mandarin, went to the district capital under an assumed name and took
charge of it. All the serving-men whom he took along were members of
his robber-band. Tschen's wife, however, together with her little boy,
he imprisoned in a tower room. And all the servants who attended her
were in the confidence of the robbers.

Now below the tower was a little pond, and in this pond rose a spring
which flowed beneath the walls to the Yellow River. So one day
Tschen's wife took a little basket of bamboo, pasted up the cracks and
laid her little boy in the basket. Then she cut her finger, wrote down
the day and hour of the boy's birth on a strip of silk paper with the
blood, and added that the boy must come and rescue her when he had
reached the age of twelve. She placed the strip of silk paper beside
the boy in the basket, and at night, when no one was about, she put
the basket in the pond. The current carried it away to the
Yangtze-kiang, and once there it drifted on as far as the monastery on
the Golden Hill, which is an island lying in the middle of the river.
There a priest who had come to draw water found it. He fished it out
and took it to the monastery.

When the abbot saw what had been written in blood, he ordered his
priests and novices to say nothing about it to any one. And he brought
up the boy in the monastery.

When the latter had reached the age of five, he was taught to read the
holy books. The boy was more intelligent than any of his
fellow-students, soon grasped the meaning of the sacred writings, and
entered more and more deeply into their secrets. So he was allowed to
take the vows, and when his head had been shaven was named: "The Monk
of the Yangtze-kiang."

By the time he was twelve he was as large and strong as a grown man.
The abbot, who knew of the duty he still had to perform, had him
called to a quiet room. There he drew forth the letter written in
blood and gave it to him.

When the monk had read