on lemon-colored silk, and sealed with the seal of the Dragon,
containing these words:--

"_From the Mighty Yong-Lo, the Sublime Tait-Sung, the Celestial and
August,--whose reign is called 'Ming,'--to Kouan-Yu the Fuh-yin: Twice
thou hast betrayed the trust we have deigned graciously to place in
thee; if thou fail a third time in fulfilling our command, thy head
shall be severed from thy neck. Tremble, and obey!_"

* * * * *

Now, Kouan-Yu had a daughter of dazzling loveliness, whose
name--Ko-Ngai--was ever in the mouths of poets, and whose heart was even
more beautiful than her face. Ko-Ngai loved her father with such love
that she had refused a hundred worthy suitors rather than make his home
desolate by her absence; and when she had seen the awful yellow missive,
sealed with the Dragon-Seal, she fainted away with fear for her father's
sake. And when her senses and her strength returned to her, she could
not rest or sleep for thinking of her parent's danger, until she had
secretly sold some of her jewels, and with the money so obtained had
hastened to an astrologer, and paid him a great price to advise her by
what means her father might be saved from the peril impending over him.
So the astrologer made observations of the heavens, and marked the
aspect of the Silver Stream (which we call the Milky Way), and examined
the signs of the Zodiac,--the _Hwang-tao_, or Yellow Road,--and
consulted the table of the Five _Hin_, or Principles of the Universe,
and the mystical books of the alchemists. And after a long silence, he
made answer to her, saying: "Gold and brass will never meet in wedlock,
silver and iron never will embrace, until the flesh of a maiden be
melted in the crucible; until the blood of a virgin be mixed with the
metals in their fusion." So Ko-Ngai returned home sorrowful at heart;
but she kept secret all that she had heard, and told no one what she had
done.

* * * * *

At last came the awful day when the third and last effort to cast the
great bell was to be made; and Ko-Ngai, together with her waiting-woman,
accompanied her father to the foundry, and they took their places upon a
platform overlooking the toiling of the moulders and the lava of
liquefied metal. All the workmen wrought their tasks in silence; there
was no sound heard but the muttering of the fires. And the muttering
deepened into a roar like the roar of typhoons approaching,