ago to be enclosed within this narrow cell until
you should come and release me. Your hand alone can remove that mystic
symbol and save me from the penalty of a living death."

Following the directions of the monkey, Sam-Chaong carefully scraped
away the yellow-coloured tracings which he tried in vain to decipher;
and when the last faint scrap had been finally removed, the huge,
gigantic boulder silently moved aside with a gentle, easy motion and
tilted itself to one side until the prisoner had emerged, when once
more it slid gracefully back into its old position.

Under the guidance of the monkey, who had assumed the appearance of a
strong and vigorous young athlete, Sam-Chaong proceeded on his
journey--over mountains so high that they seemed to touch the very
heavens, and through valleys which lay at their foot in perpetual
shadow, except only at noon-tide when the sun stood directly overhead.
Then again they travelled across deserts whose restless, storm-tossed,
sandy billows left no traces of human footsteps, and where death
seemed, like some cunning foe, to be lying in wait to destroy their
lives.

It was here that Sam-Chaong realized the protecting care of the Goddess
in providing such a valuable companion as the monkey proved himself to
be. He might have been born in these sandy wastes, so familiar was he
with their moods. There was something in the air, and in the colours
of the sky at dawn and at sunset, that told him what was going to
happen, and he could say almost to a certainty whether any storm was
coming to turn these silent deserts into storm-tossed oceans of sand,
which more ruthless even than the sea, would engulf all living things
within their pitiless depths. He knew, moreover, where the hidden
springs of water lay concealed beneath the glare and glitter that
pained the eyes simply to look upon them; and without a solitary
landmark in the boundless expanse, by unerring instinct, he would
travel straight to the very spot where the spring bubbled up from the
great fountains below.

Having crossed these howling wildernesses, where Sam-Chaong must have
perished had he travelled alone, they came to a region inhabited by a
pastoral people, but abounding in bands of robbers. Monkey was a
daring fellow and was never afraid to meet any foe in fair fight; yet
for the sake of Sam-Chaong, whose loving disposition had been
insensibly taming his wild and fiery nature, he tried as far as
possible to avoi