More than two hundred years ago certain Miao tribes in Kuangtung rose in rebellion against the Chinese emperor then on the throne. General after general was sent south from Peking to suppress the rebels, but all failed. The emperor then decided to give a large reward to anyone who could succeed where the generals had been defeated; and there came a Buddhist monk, Lo Tsu by name, who routed the rebels and restored the Imperial authority by means of Buddhist incantation Not a shot was fired. It appeared. that all that was necessary was Lo Tsu with his incantations, for a Javge part of the empire to be restored to its former allegiance. Lo Tsu returned to the capital of the empire to claim his reward and 'a grateful emperor conferred upon him a distingusthed Buddhist name, stopping short of handing over any of the imperial reserves of bullion, This nominal promotion seems, however, to have satisfied Lo Tsu, who returned to the regions of his incantatory victory, and practised the Buddhist rites with such ussi~ duty that he attracted to himself three disciples who were destined to make his name—and incidentally their own—notorious in Chinese history for the part their followers play to-day in the opium and other drug rackets all over the Yangtze Valley.
The names of the three disciples were Wang, Chien, and Pan, but they were not well received by their patron. Upon their request for tuition under his able guidance, Lo Tsu returned to the Yangtze, which he crossed in a small boat of reeds. Going to Hangchow, he crawled into a narrow cave and left his supporters outside, According to the oficial account of this ex-plait, the mouth of the cave was 0 narrow that only a person who could take upon himself the appearance and agility of a serpent could enter it. And thus Messr Wang, Chien, and Pan were left to regard the pit-like opening in some~ thing akin to consternation, deprived by the eccentricities of their chosen teacher of the privilege of sitting at his fect. They were not downhearted by the disappearance of their leader, however, calculating very nicely that he must come out of the hole sooner or later. So they camped opposite the opening of the eave and possessed their souls in patience, They had not been there more than a few days before a beautiful young boy came out of the hole and gave them a message. He said: "Did you come to ask for lessons from the reverend priest? Tome to you from him to promise to give you lessons only if you can wait for him to come out, with your waists in red snow and booted to the knees in reeds."
To the average person these conditions would have been quite enough, Red snow! Knee-boots of reeds! But the three disciples were not average persons, and they decided {0 wait outside the hole until their chosen mentor turned up. It happened that the winter season that year was particularly severe, and the three of them found them= selves before long kneeling in a condition of semi-coma in deep snow which completely obscured the hole down which their reverend professor had disappeared. One of the ¢ became sufficiently galvanized by the weather condi~ tions to go forth and goths ice stalks to protect him se! his companions from the blizzard. These rice stalks the three then laid over their heads as a kind of thatch covering. This proved very agreeable for the three, but they had omitted to take into their calculations that the birds would be unable to find anything to eat while snow covered the ground. These birds discovered that the rice stalks had some seeds of rice still attached fo them, and they therefore perched on the heads of the three disciples and pecked at the seeds. The heads of the three disciples suffered through the pecking, and their blood flowed down and encarmined the snow round their knees. Red or not.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.