il Chong Mong-ju sought me out, and
I was beaten and planked and set upon the highway.

Ever it was the same. In far Wiju I became a dog-butcher, killing the
brutes publicly before my open stall, cutting and hanging the caresses
for sale, tanning the hides under the filth of the feet of the passers-by
by spreading the hides, raw-side up, in the muck of the street. But
Chong Mong-ju found me out. I was a dyer's helper in Pyonhan, a gold-
miner in the placers of Kang-wun, a rope-maker and twine-twister in
Chiksan. I plaited straw hats in Padok, gathered grass in Whang-hai, and
in Masenpo sold myself to a rice farmer to toil bent double in the
flooded paddies for less than a coolie's pay. But there was never a time
or place that the long arm of Chong Mong-ju did not reach out and punish
and thrust me upon the beggar's way.

The Lady Om and I searched two seasons and found a single root of the
wild mountain ginseng, which is esteemed so rare and precious a thing by
the doctors that the Lady Om and I could have lived a year in comfort
from the sale of our one root. But in the selling of it I was
apprehended, the root confiscated, and I was better beaten and longer
planked than ordinarily.

Everywhere the wandering members of the great Peddlers' Guild carried
word of me, of my comings and goings and doings, to Chong Mong-ju at
Keijo. Only twice, in all the days after my downfall, did I meet Chong
Mong-ju face to face. The first time was a wild winter night of storm in
the high mountains of Kang-wun. A few hoarded coppers had bought for the
Lady Om and me sleeping space in the dirtiest and coldest corner of the
one large room of the inn. We were just about to begin on our meagre
supper of horse-beans and wild garlic cooked into a stew with a scrap of
bullock that must have died of old age, when there was a tinkling of
bronze pony bells and the stamp of hoofs without. The doors opened, and
entered Chong Mong-ju, the personification of well-being, prosperity and
power, shaking the snow from his priceless Mongolian furs. Place was
made for him and his dozen retainers, and there was room for all without
crowding, when his eyes chanced to light on the Lady Om and me.

"The vermin there in the corner--clear it out," he commanded.

And his horse-boys lashed us with their whips and drove us out into the
storm. But there was to be another meeting, after long years, as you
shall see.

There was no escape. Never was I