kitchen scullions will
creep to the throne. Soon there was a pretty to-do. The palace was the
pulse of Cho-Sen, and when the palace rocked, Cho-Sen trembled. And
there was reason for the rocking. Our marriage would be a blow straight
between the eyes of Chong Mong-ju. He fought, with a show of strength
for which Yunsan was ready. Chong Mong-ju disaffected half the
provincial priesthood, until they pilgrimaged in processions a mile long
to the palace gates and frightened the Emperor into a panic.

But Yunsan held like a rock. The other half of the provincial priesthood
was his, with, in addition, all the priesthood of the great cities such
as Keijo, Fusan, Songdo, Pyen-Yang, Chenampo, and Chemulpo. Yunsan and
the Lady Om, between them, twisted the Emperor right about. As she
confessed to me afterward, she bullied him with tears and hysteria and
threats of a scandal that would shake the throne. And to cap it all, at
the psychological moment, Yunsan pandered the Emperor to novelties of
excess that had been long preparing.

"You must grow your hair for the marriage knot," Yunsan warned me one
day, with the ghost of a twinkle in his austere eyes, more nearly
facetious and human than I had ever beheld him.

Now it is not meet that a princess espouse a sea-cuny, or even a claimant
of the ancient blood of Koryu, who is without power, or place, or visible
symbols of rank. So it was promulgated by imperial decree that I was a
prince of Koryu. Next, after breaking the bones and decapitating the
then governor of the five provinces, himself an adherent of Chong Mong-
ju, I was made governor of the seven home provinces of ancient Koryu. In
Cho-Sen seven is the magic number. To complete this number two of the
provinces were taken over from the hands of two more of Chong Mong-ju's
adherents.

Lord, Lord, a sea-cuny . . . and dispatched north over the Mandarin Road
with five hundred soldiers and a retinue at my back! I was a governor of
seven provinces, where fifty thousand troops awaited me. Life, death,
and torture, I carried at my disposal. I had a treasury and a treasurer,
to say nothing of a regiment of scribes. Awaiting me also was a full
thousand of tax-farmers; who squeezed the last coppers from the toiling
people.

The seven provinces constituted the northern march. Beyond lay what is
now Manchuria, but which was known by us as the country of the Hong-du,
or "Red Heads." They were wild raiders, on occas