On the first day's journey toward Chang-an-sa the party made good
progress. The plan was to get to Yong-pyoeng, about twenty miles from
Seoul, before nightfall. To you this would seem a short day's journey,
but when it is remembered that many of the servants were on foot, and
that the little ponies were heavily loaded, it does not seem so strange
that more ground could not be covered in one day. In addition, in many
places the roads were poor, though in the valleys there was a smooth
bottom where the sand had washed down from the hills.

On some of these hillsides little villages were perched. Yung Pak
noticed that on the upper side of each of these hill-towns was a
moon-shaped wall.

"What is that wall for?" he asked Wang Ken as they passed one.

"That protects the village in time of rainstorms," replied the tutor.
"The soil here is of such a nature that it easily washes away, and if
the town were unprotected the earth would soon be swept from beneath the
houses. If you will look sharply, you will see outside the wall a deep
trench which carries off the rushing water."

As they were slowly riding along a road which wound around and over a
high hill Yung Pak still kept his eyes wide open for strange sights.
Suddenly he lifted his arm, and, pointing toward a tree upon a little
hill at one side of the road, he said to Wang Ken:

"Oh, what a queer-looking tree that is! And are not those strange leaves
on it? What kind of a tree is it, anyway?"

"Ha, ha!" laughed Wang Ken, "I don't wonder that you call that a
strange-looking tree. Let's take a walk up to it and get a closer view."

So the ponies were halted, and down sprang Yung Pak and Wang Ken.
Leaving the ponies in charge of the _mapus_, they marched up the hill to
get a nearer sight of the tree.

"Why," said the boy, as they approached it, "those are not leaves that
we saw from the road, but they are rags and strips of cloth. It looks as
if some one had hung out their clothes to dry and forgotten to take them
in again. What does it all mean?"

"That tree, my boy," Wang Ken replied, "is called the sacred devil-tree.
That is a queer combination of names, but you know there are a lot of
ignorant people in our country who are very superstitious. They believe
in all sorts of evil and good spirits. They think these spirits watch
every act of their lives. Consequently they do all they can to please
the good spirits and to drive away the evil ones. This tree they be