her own palace.

"'Guard this well,' she said, 'and treasure it as your very life, for
it will secure you the services of one who for five hundred years was
kept in confinement in order that he might be ready to escort you on
the way to the Western Heaven. He is the one man who has the daring
and the courage to meet the foes who will endeavour to destroy you on
your journey, but he is as full of passion as the storm when it is
blowing in its fury. Should he ever desert you again, you have but to
place this cap on your head, and he will be wrung with such awful and
intolerable agonies that though he were a thousand miles away he would
hurry back with all the speed he could command to have you take it off
again, so that he might be relieved from the fearful pains racking his
body.'"

After numerous adventures too long to relate, Sam-Chaong reached the
borders of an immense lake, many miles in extent, spanned by a bridge
of only a single foot in width. With fear and trembling, as men
tremble on the brink of eternity, and often with terror in his eyes and
a quivering in his heart as he looked at the narrow foothold on which
he was treading, he finally crossed in safety, when he found to his
astonishment that the pulsations of a new life had already begun to
beat strongly within him. Beyond a narrow strip of land, which bounded
the great expanse of water over which he had just passed, was a wide
flowing river, and on its bank was a boat with a ferryman in it ready
to row him over.

When they had reached the middle of the stream, Sam-Chaong saw a man
struggling in the water as if for dear life. Moved with pity he urged
upon the boatman to go to his rescue and deliver him from drowning. He
was sternly told, however, to keep silence. "The figure you see
there," said the boatman, "is yourself--or rather, it is but the shell
of your old self, in which you worked out your redemption in the world
beyond, and which you could never use in the new life upon which you
have entered."

On the opposite bank of the river stood the Goddess of Mercy, who with
smiling face welcomed him into the ranks of the fairies.

Since then, it is believed by those whose vision reaches further than
the grey and common scenes of earthly life, Sam-Chaong has frequently
appeared on earth, in various disguises, when in some great emergency
more than human power was required to deliver men from destruction.
There is one thing certain at least,--t