The Living Reed

II

THE YEAR WAS 4243 after Tangun of Korea and 1910 after Jesus of Judea. The season was near the end of winter, the day was the tenth of the first moon month, the hour was midnight.

Il-han woke sharply and by habit now well established. He rose, taking care to be quiet so that Sunia would not wake as he crept from beneath his quilt. The ondul floor was cold. Fuel was too scarce to bank fires at night and the only warmth was from the quick flame of dried grass when the evening meal was cooking. He went into the next room, his stockinged feet noiseless, and there he poured cold water into a basin set on the table and washed his face and hands. Then he unwound his hair, oiled and combed it and coiled it again on top of his head. This hair he had kept short ever since he had been in America, against Sunia’s complaints that women would think he was not married, but when the Japanese rulers moved into the capital he felt compelled to let his hair grow in defiance of the command of the Japanese Prince, now Resident-General. He had sent out a decree declaring that no reforms could be made in Korea until the men cut off their topknots, for he maintained that in this stubborn coil of hair was the symbol of Korean nationalism which must be utterly destroyed since Korea had become a colony of imperial Japan. The Governor-General then announced that the King had cut off his coil of hair and that he, the King, commanded his subjects to follow his example. This the Koreans had at first refused to do, saying that the King had not cut his hair by his own free will but had been forced to do so by his Japanese masters. In the end many had refused to obey, including Il-han, and so his hair was long again.

He slid open the doors now and looked out into the night. A slight mist of rain was falling and the darkness was deep. He lit the stone lantern that stood by the door, and he waited until he saw those whom he expected. A man came out of the night leading some twenty children of different ages, all boys. They walked in silence until they reached him. The man looked left and right and then spoke in a low voice.

“We saw a distant light.”

“In what direction?” Il-han asked in the same low voice.

“To the north.”

“A moving light?”

“Yes, but only one. Yet one spy is enough.”

“I will keep the children here until dawn. Then I will send them away separately,” Il-han said.

The man nodded and disappeared again into the mist. Il-han led the children into the house, looking into each face. Accustomed to silence, they walked gravely past him and into the room. He followed them, first putting out the light in the stone lantern. Then he drew the doors shut and barred them fast. By now the boys were seated on the floor. He took his place before them on his floor cushion and opened his book and began to speak, his voice still low.

“You will remember,” he said, “that last night I spoke of King Sejong. I told you of his greatness, and how under his beneficent rule our country grew strong.”

He continued to speak of history for half an hour. Then he closed his book and recited poetry. For tonight he had chosen a famous poem of the late Koryo times, written in the Sijo style.

“And this,” he explained to his pupils, “is a special style because those times were like our own, troubled times when poets could not write long poems in the ancient Kyonggi style. Therefore they put their feelings into short intense form. There are only about ten of these Sijo poems left to us, and among them I have chosen the one written by Chong Mungju, who was a minister of Koryo, loyal to his King. Listen to me, children! I will chant the poem for you, and then line by line you will chant after me.” He closed his eyes and folded his hands and began to chant:

“Though this frame should die and die,

Though I die a hundred deaths,

My bleached bones becoming dust,

My soul dead or living on,

Naught can make this heart of mine

Divide itself against my King.”

He opened his eyes and repeated the poem line by line, the fresh young voices repeated them after him, and he observed how muted these voices were from the habit of fear. For what he now did was forbidden. The alien rulers had changed the schools so that even the language was no longer Korean but Japanese, and the books were Japanese. Unless scholars like Il-han taught the children in secret in the darkness of the night they would grow up ignorant of their own language and their own past and cease at last to be Korean.

When they had learned the poem, which they soon did, each child intent to learn what was forbidden, he expounded the meaning of the poem and how they all, like that minister in the past, must be loyal to the King, even though he lived now in duress and was only King in name.

“Our King’s heart is still with us,” he told them, “and the proof of his being with us is in the disbanding of our army. The Resident-General of the Japanese Imperial Army commanded our army to be disbanded in a very rude and dishonorable manner as you know, and our King was forced to sign the order for the disbandment. Yet only a few days later our King appeared at his Japanese coronation, wearing the uniform of the disbanded army. Meanwhile our disbanded soldiers are wandering everywhere telling the people of their dishonor, which some day we must erase.

“Remember, children, lest it be not written down. Two years ago our army, seventy thousand men, was dismissed by the invaders. Each man was given ten yen and told to go home. Most of them went to other countries to wait until the time comes for our freedom and many thousands went to Manchuria, where there is land.”

In this way Il-han, and many like him, informed the young of the greatness of their ancestors and the disgrace of their present, and how they, the young, must not cease to rebel in their hearts against the island invaders who had seized the country.

“We are far higher than these petty foreign rulers,” Il-han went on. “Though they treat us as serfs and slaves, we are not what they hold us to be. Nor should we in justice believe that all Japanese are as small as these who rule us. They have not men enough to govern their own country with greatness and they cannot spare us their highest men. Here we have the low fellows, the ignorant, the greedy, and we must suffer them, but the day will come when they will be cast out.”

“By what means?” a lad inquired.

“That is for you to decide,” Il-han replied.

“Why should they come here and take our country?” another lad inquired.

He was a rebel born but Il-han was too just a teacher not to present to such a lad the other side of truth.

“Alas,” he said, “there is always another face to everything. Imagine yourself a lad in Japan. Then you would be taught that it is essential for Japan to control Korea, else our country is like a dagger pointed to her heart. Russia, too, wants Korea — Russia has always wanted Korea, you remember. Ah, but you are a Japanese lad, imagine, and so your teacher would be saying, ‘We Japanese cannot tolerate the Russians so near us in Korea and that is why we fought the war with Russia, we Japanese, and we won, and all the world acclaimed us. It was necessary in that time of war to send our armies across Korea!’”

“They could have taken them away again when the victory was won,” a lad interrupted.

Il-han put up his hand. “Remember now, we are Japanese for the moment. The Japanese teacher says, ‘Had we taken our armies out of Korea, Russia would have come back in secret ways. No, we must hold Korea as our fort. And besides, we need more land for our growing people, and we need new markets.’”

He broke off and gave a great sigh. “I cannot go on with such imagining. We are Korean patriots!”

“Why did we not fight the Japanese?” a bold lad demanded.

“Alas,” Il-han said again, “our sin was in our many divisions. We quarreled over how to defeat our enemies, how to keep our freedom. One family clan against another has divided our nation and for centuries. Divided we fell. Our own people rose against our own corruption. Well, it is over. Gone are the great families, the Yi, the Min, the Pak, the Kim, the Choi, and besides them the Silhak, the Tonghak and every other such division. Now we are united in our longing for our lost independence high and low, and we have only the Japanese to hate instead of one another. Perhaps it will be easier.”

So the hours sped on. Listening always for unknown footsteps, his eyes watching the door, Il-han taught them the Korean language and its hangul writing until dawn stole across the foothills and the mountains and the sun rose. He had meant to let them sleep for a while at least but the day came too soon. Sunia was astir in the kitchen and one of the two old servants left to them put in his head at the door to warn Il-han of sunrise. Il-han looked up, surprised.

“I have kept you all night, my children,” he said, “and you will not do well in school today. Tonight do not come. Sleep, and we will meet again the night after. Now go, one by one, a little space between so that you do not seem a crowd.”

He stood by then and let them leave, each alone and walking in different directions, so that none would suspect he had taught them in secret. When the sun rose high enough to shine on the mountains the last pupil was gone and he was suddenly weary, although it was Sunia who made him know it. She came in brisk and neatly dressed for the day.

“How long will you go on with this teaching?” she exclaimed. “You look like an old man.”

“I feel like an old man,” he said. “A very old man.”

“You are only fifty-four,” she retorted, “and I beg you will not call yourself old for then you make me old. Drink this ginseng soup. Why have you kept the pupils all night?”

He took the bowl of soup and blew it and supped. “There was a moving light, unexplained.”

“If you had called me,” she said somewhat crossly, “I would have told you that our younger son is here. He came in the back gate, carrying a lantern.”

“Yul-han? Why did you not tell him to come in?”

“He forbade it,” she replied.

She was tidying the room as she spoke, picking up bits of paper the pupils had left, smoothing the floor cushions, dusting the table.

“Forbade it?”

“You are getting the habit of repeating what I say. Yes, he forbade it!”

He looked at her mildly. The strain of the times, the constant living in fear of the knock on the door, the secrecy, the poverty, all were changing his Sunia into a weary, irritable woman. He felt a new love for her, tender with pity. She had not his inner resources, his place of retreat into the calm of poetry and music. He put out his hand as she passed him and laid hold of her skirt.

“My faithful wife,” he murmured.

The tears came to her eyes but she would not shed them.

“You have not eaten,” she exclaimed. “I forget my duty.” She hurried to the door and paused. “Shall I tell Yul-han to come in now?”

“Do so,” he replied.

Before she returned, his younger son entered. Yul-han was the name given him when he began school, and it suited him, in both sound and meaning — Spring Peace! Now at twenty-nine years of age, he was neither tall nor short but slim and strong, his round face pleasant without being handsome. He wore the western garments which many young men wore nowadays under Japanese rule, a suit of gray cloth, trousers and coat and under the coat a blue shirt open at the neck and on his feet leather shoes. It was a nondescript garb, proclaiming no nationality, and Il-han, saying nothing, was always displeased when he saw his son wearing such garments. Did it mean he avoided proclaiming himself Korean? Was this son a prudent fellow, escaping trouble and argument in this vague attire? He refused himself answers to such private doubts and questions.

“Father,” Yul-han said and bowed.

“Son, sit down,” Il-han replied and inclined his head. “Have you eaten?”

“Not yet. I came early because I must go back to my school.”

Il-han did not reply. This son of his was a teacher in a school where, as in all schools now, the classes were conducted in the Japanese language and the curriculum was planned by the Japanese Board of Education. When Yul-han first told him that he had accepted this position, Il-han was more angry than he had ever been before in his life.

“You!” he had exclaimed. “You sell yourself to these invaders!”

He had never forgotten his son’s quiet reply.

“Father, I ask you to consider my inheritance — the inheritance of all my generation. What have you left us, you elders? A government rotten with corruption, a people oppressed by the yangban, taxes on everything but never spent on the people! Is it a wonder that the people are always rioting and rising up? Is there ever peace in the provinces? Is it strange that we have for generations been split into a score of parties? What does it all mean except that we are desperate? Yes, I chose the Il Chon Hui because among our enemies I favor the Japanese! At least they are trying to make order out of our ancient chaos. And the worst chaos, as you very well know, is in our national finances. Two hundred Japanese are scattered throughout our country, collecting new figures. Why do I say new? There are no figures. No one knew how much money was collected in taxes or how it was spent. As for property — I do not know how you have held our own lands except that we are yangban, and you, too, had your special influence in court.”

Here Il-han had stopped him. “If you insinuate that I, your father, am corrupt—”

“The corruption began long before your generation,” Yul-han said. “Before you were born — or my grandfather was born — there was already no distinction made between Court and Government property or between State and private properties or State and Imperial household properties. Why do I tell you, Father? You know that magistrates collected taxes as they pleased and spent them as they pleased. Land tax — house tax — but have we ourselves ever paid taxes, Father?”

To this Il-han had not replied except to say, “You echo your brother’s complaints.”

Father and son were silent then for a long moment. It was the sorrow of this household that none knew where the elder son had gone, or even whether he had been killed as so many young men were killed when the invaders came. Even were he dying he must continue in exile, for the invaders knew the name of every man who had opposed them. During the war with China the Japanese had marched into Korea on the way, and when they were victorious, Russia, fearful lest Japan hold the country, had sent in her own armies to contend. Japan had trebled her forces only to declare war next against Russia, and this war she won, too, to the admiration of the western powers, and especially of the United States, whose citizens applauded the doughty small nation who dared to fight the Russian giant. In their approbation, the Americans forgot their treaty of protection, wherein they had promised to help Korea to freedom, for in that treaty the Americans had promised that if any country dealt with Korea unjustly or oppressively, their government would “bring about an amicable arrangement.”

Such watery words were meaningless, Il-han had so told the King at the time and it was proved. For the King, in despair when the invaders came, appealed to the Americans and one good American, Homer Hulbert, who was head of the government school in Seoul, himself went to Washington to plead for the Koreans, whom, though a foreigner, he had learned to love. But the President, one Theodore Roosevelt, would not receive him, and his Secretary of State merely brought the message that the United States would not intervene in Korea. And later that same President openly made this declaration:

“Korea is absolutely Japan’s.”

Yet by treaty it had been solemnly covenanted that Korea should remain independent. Alas, Korea was helpless and Japan maintained that it was her own duty to her own children and children’s children to override the treaty, and so Japan formally annexed the country. And the first Japanese Governor-General, when he came to rule the Koreans, tore up the treaty and threw the scattered bits of paper into the air.

“Yet we are civilized,” he declared, and in proof he did not behead the King or his feeble son. Instead he gave them an annuity, and the two lived on in the palace.

Today, remembering the unanswered question, Il-han looked at his son half quizzically.

“It may please you,” he said, “to know that yesterday the Japanese tax gatherers came here to collect tax from me.”

The young man’s face showed concern. “Did you have the money, Father?”

“No,” Il-han said calmly. “Nowadays I have no money.”

“So?”

“I gave them a deed to the big field at the north of the village.”

Yul-han looked grave. “You must reckon on regular taxes, Father, land or no land. And we must admit that the money is being well used. The streets are much improved — you would not know the city now. We are not sunk in mud when it rains, the streets are no longer drains and dumping places, and roads are being made in the country connecting the villages. Even the side paths are being improved, and trees are planted.”

“I do not intend to travel,” Il-han replied, “so why should I pay for roads? I say again I have no money.”

“At any rate, money will be worth more, whenever you have it,” Yul-han urged. “The currency reform—”

“I beg you will not speak to me of such reforms,” Il-han said coldly. “I had rather live with muddy roads and ill-spent taxes and all the old evils than live as we now do, crushed under the oppression of the invader, who is stealing lands from our people—”

“Not stealing, exactly,” Yul-han said.

“I call it stealing when I give up my land under compulsion.”

“Could you not borrow?” Yul-han suggested.

“No,” Il-han said strongly. “I will not step into that pitfall. You know how our people are. They are always ready to borrow money; even when they do not need it they will accept an offered loan, with no thought of how it is to be paid. Then, when it must be paid, they lose their land.”

“Yet this is the old way of the yangban,” Yul-han retorted. “Can you deny that our own ancestors did so procure our land? How else could we inherit so much?”

Since he could not deny, Il-han could only be angry. “At least our ancestors were our own yangban nobility and not dwarfs from foreign islands!”

“Stop!”

Yul-han looked left and right as he spoke. He leaned forward. “Father, you think me a traitor. I am no traitor. I — we — my friends and I — when the present rulers have made the reforms we need, some day we will take our country back again. We must use them now — use these men, learn from them how to run a modern nation — and when we have learned …”

Father and son stared into each other’s eyes, but before either could speak Sunia came into the room, carrying a tray with two bowls of steaming rice gruel. She set it down on the table between them.

“Have you told your father?” she inquired of Yul-han.

“No, we have spoken first of other matters.”

“What else is there to speak of?” she retorted. She stood up, wiping her hands on her apron. “Il-han, he is ready to be married now, this son of ours! At last he is ready to be married.”

Here was Sunia’s complaint in these times. The Japanese Governor-General had commanded that the early marriages common to the Korean people must be delayed. Early marriages, he declared, made weak children. Therefore Yul-han had steadfastly refused to be married.

“What,” Sunia had cried, when he first refused, “are we to have no grandchildren? Am I to have no daughter-in-law to help me in the house? And who will care for you, pray, when you yourself are old?”

“Mother,” Yul-han had replied with his usual patience. “Your grandchildren will be the stronger and better for not being born of parents too young.”

“You have an answer for everything now, you young men,” Sunia had said bitterly.

“He is ready to be married at last,” she repeated now. “Yet who will have him at his age? Twenty-nine! We should already have grandsons ten years old. Indeed we should be thinking of great-grandsons.”

Neither man spoke. They exchanged glances in mutual male comprehension. Why was it that women could think only of giving birth to children and more children, their whole concern intent upon their one creative function? Even Sunia!

She stooped to pull a floor cushion nearer.

“Eat, you two! While you eat I will talk. Now whom shall we find for this son? I have in mind—”

Yul-han had taken up his chopsticks but he put them down again.

“Mother, you need not busy yourself. I have found the woman I want for my wife.”

Sunia let her jaw drop. “You,” she exclaimed. “How can you—”

“I can, Mother,” Yul-han said in his pleasant way. “And you will like her. She is a teacher too, but in the girls’ school.”

“I will not like her,” Sunia declared. “A teacher! What I wish is a good daughter-in-law here in this house. How can I take care of your children if you live in the city?”

Yul-han laughed. “What haste! I am not married yet. And perhaps she will not have me. I have not spoken to her.”

This only brought fresh indignation for Sunia. “How dare she not have my son! Where does she live?” she cried. “What is her name? I will see to it.”

“She lives in the capital,” Yul-han said. “Her family name is Choi. Her name is—”

“Do not speak her personal name — not yet,” Sunia commanded. “Time enough when she is my daughter-in-law.”

Yul-han yielded, smiling, and took up his chopsticks again.

“I shall be late for school,” he said, and he ate his rice and kimchee quickly and bade them farewell.

He walked quickly and gaily along the country road toward the city. In spite of the evil times he felt lighthearted. The truth had been told. His parents knew that he had chosen his own wife. Until they knew, he had not felt free to break with tradition and approach Induk for himself. They had never even been alone, but in the teachers’ meetings they had spoken to each other, and then, when he found out that her family was Christian, he had on several Sunday mornings gone to the Christian temple on the main street of the city. Men and women sat separately but he discovered that the Choi ladies sat in the second row from the front and he went early to sit as near Induk as possible. He saw only her smooth nape and the coil of her dark hair. Yet when she sang the hymns, sometimes he saw her profile, the small straight nose, the parted lips, the round, cream-white chin. She was tall for a woman, but slender, and she always wore Korean dress. Last Sunday he had lingered at the church door, watching for her, and had been waylaid by the American missionary. This man, a rugged priest, his hair and eyebrows and beard a rusty red, had taken him by the hand and then had spoken in a booming voice.

“Friend, you have been here several times. You are welcome. Do you want to know Jesus?”

Yul-han had been embarrassed by the question and he could only smile. At this moment Induk herself came out of the door and seeing what was happening, she approached and introduced him.

“Dr. Maclane, this is Kim Yul-han, a teacher in the boys’ school.”

“Does he want to be a Christian?” the missionary boomed again.

Induk laughed. “Let me find out,” she said.

Her eyes, dark and lively, exchanged a look with Yul-han’s.

“Good — good,” the missionary said heartily, his small blue eyes already following other persons, and he released Yul-han and hastened away.

From this moment of understanding, the two had moved quickly to meeting alone one afternoon in a deserted classroom. By chance Induk was walking through a corridor on her way home and Yul-han, seeing her in the distance, had followed her.

“Miss Choi!”

She turned, saw him, and waited.

“Should you not begin to make me a Christian?” he inquired with mischief.

He enjoyed her fresh free laugh.

“Do you want to be a Christian?” she asked.

“Do you think it would improve me?” he countered.

“I do not know how good you are, as you are,” she replied, teasing.

He liked her frankness, her humor, and he had walked with her, both of them self-conscious in their determination to be modern. It was not easy to break down the wall of tradition between man and woman. He was too aware of Induk as a woman, dazzled by the whiteness of her skin, the sheen of her dark hair, the loveliness of her small ears close set against the handsome head, her lithe body moving gracefully in step with him, her fragrance, the sweetness of her breath. Everything about her was feminine, warm and strong.

They halted involuntarily at the open door of an empty classroom and moved by the same impulse, they went in and sat down in the back of the room. The door was open but anyone passing could not see them. Dangerous it still was, but they could not part, not yet in this their first enchantment. What they had said in those few minutes alone was simple, even inconsequential, and yet he remembered every word.

“Do you like teaching girls?” A stupid question he knew as soon as he had asked it, for whom would she teach if not girls?

“I like teaching,” she said.

“So do I.”

They had paused. Then it was she who began.

“Do not be a Christian unless you wish. One should follow his own heart.”

“What is the advantage of being Christian?” he asked.

She hesitated. “It is hard to say. My family is Christian, and I have grown up Christian. We believe in God, and we are comforted. In the church we meet with others who believe.”

“What are the doctrines?”

“I cannot explain to you in a few minutes. Have you read the New Testament?”

“I have read nothing Christian. To me Christianity is a foreign religion.”

“Nothing that teaches us about God can be foreign. I will bring my New Testament to school tomorrow and you can read it. Then we will talk. Now we must go.”

She rose and he could only follow. When they parted at the door, he walked away in a daze, and was already dreaming of tomorrow. Yet the next day he did not see her. On his desk was a small parcel addressed to him. He opened it and found the book. There was no letter with it.

He began to read it that same evening and now was nearly at its end. One more evening, he told himself as he came to the city gate, and tomorrow he would find her and tell her.

“I have read the book,” he would tell her. “Now we must talk.”

When their son was gone, Sunia turned to Il-han. “You must go privately into the city and see for yourself this family of Choi. See where they live, what sort of house it is, what the neighbors say — and which Choi it is. Choi is a name of the North. Shall we of the South accept a daughter-in-law of the North?”

Il-han had been deeply disturbed by all that Yul-han had said before she came in. He could not forget the accusations that his mild son had made against his father’s generation, and he longed to make even small amends.

“Sunia,” he said, “I will go. I will look at the house. I will consult the neighbors. But it is time to forget who is from the North and who is from the South. Let us only remember, North or South, that we are Koreans.”

Since Sunia gave him no peace once her mind was set on some goal, he went three days later to the city where for so long he had not been. It was as Yul-han had said. The streets were new and clean, and there were many changes. Everywhere he saw new shops where Japanese merchants sold their goods, and this he had heard was true throughout the country in town and village. But what he saw first was that of all parts of the city the quarter where the Japanese lived was the most prosperous and that it had grown from a cluster of houses to a city within a city. And when he asked of passersby, he was told that the Japanese Legation was now the house where the Governor-General lived, the gardens enlarged and made beautiful, as he could see when he looked into the open gates, but guarded by Japanese soldiers.

“Pass on, old man,” the soldiers cried when he lingered. “No one is allowed to stop at these gates.”

He went on. Opposite to this new-made palace other new buildings were built on a low hill and here he lingered again.

“What are these new buildings?” he inquired of the guard.

“These are the offices and headquarters of the Governor-General, the noble Count Terauchi,” the guard replied. “Do you not know the Tokanfu when you see it? You must be a countryman.”

Il-han did not reply. What the ignorant guardsman himself did not know was that this place where the center of government now was, a foreign government established by invaders, had once before been the site of a castle belonging to these same invaders.

In the time of Hideyoshi during the invasion of Taiko Sama, one Kato Kyomasu, his most able lieutenant, had built a castle here. The castle had been destroyed when the invaders were repulsed, but they had returned and now here again was the seat of that same government over a proud people but subject, his own people.

Could this be accident or was it fate?

… “How could you see so little?” Sunia inquired when he returned.

Her eyes sparkled with indignation. “You go to the city and stay away for hours and then come back only to say that the house looks like every other house, and though the neighbors speak well of this Choi family, you forget to ask where they came from—”

“I told you, they said the family has lived in the same house for six generations,” Il-han replied.

He was very weary but he knew he could have no rest until he satisfied Sunia’s questions.

“Did you see no one of them?” she asked next.

“You said I was not to ask to enter.”

“You could have looked in the gate.”

“I did look in the gate. I saw two servants and a young woman cutting some flowers.”

“It might have been she,” Sunia exclaimed.

“It might have been,” he agreed.

“Was she pretty?”

“Now, Sunia,” he remonstrated. “What can I say to that? If I say yes you will not be pleased with my sharp eyesight. If I say no you will blame me for seeing nothing. I can only say that she looked cheerful and healthy.”

“Round face or long face?”

“I cannot tell you. It was a face with the necessary features.”

“Oh me,” Sunia sighed, “am I to have a daughter-in-law who has only a face with necessary features?”

He laughed and then, because he was so weary and worried with matters which he could not explain to her, he kept on laughing until she was alarmed.

“Did you drink while you were in the city?” she demanded.

“No, no,” he said, wiping away tears. “I am only laughing.”

“At me, I’ll swear!”

“At women,” he said. “Man’s eternal laughter at woman! That is all — that is all.”

Sunia sighed. “However long I live with you, I do not understand you!”

She looked at him earnestly for a moment, and quizzically as if to appraise him. Then she too began to laugh.

“And what are you laughing at?” he inquired, surprised.

“At you,” she said. “Am I not allowed to laugh?”

“Certainly,” he said. “Laugh your woman’s laughter. Why not?”

He was not pleased, nevertheless, although he did not know why, and he took up his book as a sign that she was dismissed, which sign she obeyed still smiling, and her lively eyes were mischievous.

Early spring gave way to full spring. Plum trees bloomed and their petals fell and cherry and peach, apple and pomegranate followed, blossom producing fruit, and Yul-han walked in dreams. No longer did he make pretense of accident when he met Induk, and she did not pretend. They met with their eyes when they were in the company of others, but when they met alone they spoke from their hearts. Neither used words of love for none were necessary. Each knew that they had but one thought and it was marriage. He knew that in the West it was the custom for a man to offer himself to the woman, but this was a way too foreign for him and, he was sure, for her. Were the approach so naked, would she not, in modesty, be repelled by him? He thought day and night of what he could say or do to express his love and desire. The new way was too foreign but the old way was too public. A professional matchmaker was only a coarse old woman. Nor did he want his parents to approach her family. The bustle of mothers, the formality of fathers, belonged to a past age. And Induk was Christian and would want a Christian ceremony. It was a grave danger, this marrying a Christian. The Japanese rulers did not like the missionaries or their religion; missionaries were sympathetic with the Koreans, they said, and the religion in itself was revolutionary in content.

Suddenly it occurred to him one day how to ask Induk if she would be his wife. It was a Sunday afternoon, the first in the sixth solar month. They had met by arrangement in one of the new city parks, and had walked to a quiet pool under hanging willows. He spread his coat on the bench for her to sit upon and together they watched the goldfish darting among the water lilies. Now — now was the moment. He began diffidently, wondering if he dared to touch her hand.

“Induk, I have something to ask you.”

She did not turn her head. “What is it?”

Across the pool a flowering quince tree, growing in the shade of the willows, was still in bloom. He saw the red petals dropping into the water. Goldfish darted up to nibble them and darted away again. He went on slowly, feeling his cheeks burning hot.

“Will you go with me to a fortuneteller?”

His voice was so low that he feared it lost in the ripple of the small waterwall at the end of the pool. But she heard.

“Do you believe in fortunetellers?” she asked, incredulous.

“To discover whether our birth years agree,” he said.

She understood. He knew it by her sudden stillness. She neither spoke nor moved. He looked at her sidewise and saw a rose-pink flush mounting from her soft neck to her cheeks. She was shy! She who seemed always so calm, so competent, so sure of herself, was shy before him, and seeing her thus, his own diffidence faded. He sprang to his feet and held out his hand.

“Come,” he commanded. “We will go now.”

She looked up at him, hesitating. “Alone? The two of us? Will it not seem strange to the fortuneteller?”

“What do we care?” he asked, very bold.

He smiled down into her eyes, infusing her with his own daring. She grasped his hand and leaped lightly to her feet. Hand in hand in the gathering dusk they went through the now lonely park and into a narrow cross street. There in a corner sheltered by an overhanging roof an old fortuneteller sat in the dim light of a paper lantern swinging over his head, waiting for customers. Before him was a small table, upon it the tools of his trade. He peered through his horn-rimmed spectacles at Yul-han and Induk.

“What do you seek?” he asked, his voice cracked with his sitting in wind and rain, snow and heat.

“Our birth years,” Yul-han said. “Are they suited for marriage?” And he gave the years in which he and Induk were born.

The fortuneteller muttered and mumbled over his signs and fumbled in worn old books. They waited, hands clasped and hidden behind the table. At last he looked up, and took off his spectacles.

“Earth,” he declared. “Both of you belong to Earth. Thus far it is yes. As to which animal …”

Here he pursed his withered lips and mused aloud while he pondered his books again.

“I can almost guess by looking at the two of you what your animal years are. People are like the animals under which they are born. You are not pig, or snake, or rat …”

He fell silent while his long dirty fingernail traced the paper.

“A-ha!” he cried. “You are safe, both of you! You, the male, are dragon; you, the female, are tiger. Dragon is stronger than tiger, young man, but tiger is strong, and she will fight you sometimes, though she can never win, for the dragon sits above, always in the clouds.”

In spite of their avowed disbelief in the old symbols both Yul-han and Induk were relieved. Tradition was still powerful and a man may not marry a woman whose animal is stronger than his own, else she will rule him without remorse or tenderness. Yet each was ashamed to show relief.

“I must fight you, it seems,” Induk said.

“You will always lose, remember,” Yul-han retorted.

Induk sighed in pretended despair and Yul-han laughed. Then something occurred to him.

“Old Fortuneteller,” he said, “are you not shocked that we make inquiry for ourselves?”

The old man stroked his few gray whiskers. “Not at all,” he said. “Young ones come nowadays to inquire for themselves.”

They were too surprised to reply to this and they went away in silence. But their joy was increased. When they parted, Yul-han held both her hands for a long moment as they stood in the shadow of a stranger’s gate.

“So there are many of us,” he murmured before he let her go.

… As for Il-han, he took no further interest in the marriage, which was, after all, women’s business. Indeed, as he reflected upon it, the wedding might bring only dissension into his house, for the young woman whom Yul-han wished to marry now broke all tradition by coming herself one day to see Sunia, her future mother-in-law, and, to his surprise, himself, for when the girl arrived alone except for an old woman servant, she asked not only to see the house but her future father-in-law. He was disturbed by Sunia, who came breathless into his library to tell him the strange news.

“She is here,” Sunia exclaimed.

“She?” Il-han repeated.

“The woman — the girl — Yul-han—” She paused, not knowing what to say. Betrothed she was not as yet and to use the word “friend” in relation to a son would have evil implication. “Her name is Induk,” she finished.

“Well?” Il-han asked.

“What shall we do? She wishes to see us both!”

“Tell her I am busy,” Il-han said promptly.

Sunia hesitated. “Will she not think it rebuff? Yet what will the neighbors say if you do see her?”

Yul-han now arrived by another way, in time to hear these words. He came in and slid the wall door shut behind him. “Father — Mother—” He had been running and he breathed hard. “Remember that everything is different nowadays. She teaches the girls and I teach the boys, but we see each other in the corridors and on the playground in passing. I asked her myself if she would have me and she said yes. She wants our wedding to be modern.”

“What is modern?” Sunia inquired with some scorn.

“Well, she does not wish you to give her the usual red and green sets of garments. She says a ring on her finger at the time of our marriage is enough.”

“How does she mean enough?” Sunia demanded. “The red garments signify the passion any marriage must have for happiness and the green signifies that you will grow together, you two young ones. How will you say such things except through these gifts?”

Yul-han shrugged his shoulders. He could not explain to his parents how such things were said nowadays.

Sunia’s sharp eyes saw the shrug and immediately she went on. “Doubtless the girl is not serious. At any rate, we do not know whether the marriage will be propitious. Fortunetellers must be called. We do not even know your two birth years. How can we know the combination of your lives?”

Yul-han smiled. He went to the garden door and stood there. The summer peonies were in bloom, their red and white flowers were vivid against the young green. In the pond a frog croaked. “Only for fun,” he said, “she and I did inquire of a fortuneteller. We were both born in the year of Earth and though she is Tiger, I am Dragon.”

Sunia could not but be pleased. “Can it be so! Earth? Then as every branch of a tree bursts into flower, your children will prosper and grow.” She turned to Il-han, suddenly radiant. “We will be cared for in our old age!”

“If we believe in such things,” Il-han said drily.

Sunia refused to be discouraged. “There is something in such symbols. Do not forget that our ancestors lived by their belief and are we better than they?”

The two men, father and son, said nothing. Each had his thoughts — Yul-han that any happiness his mother could find would be well for himself and Induk, and Il-han that he would not at this time of her life disturb Sunia’s faith and hope. They remained silent while Sunia prattled on.

“Now,” she said happily, “it is a good thing that we do not need to pay fortunetellers. The wedding must be thought of next — a good wedding. We must prepare the wedding hat and belt for you, my son, and we must mend the old palanquin to fetch the bride home to this house after the three days of ceremony. The curtains are in shreds.”

Yul-han turned. “Mother,” he said. “Remember that she comes from a city family. And I, too, do not wish to have an old-fashioned wedding. What! I go through all that clownery?”

He spoke with unusual energy, and Il-han was surprised that his quiet son could for the moment at least again resemble his older brother. But Sunia was not patient.

“Are we not to have a decent wedding?” she demanded. “True, we are poor now as everyone is, but not too poor to see our sons properly married. Sons? That older brother of yours refused to be married. Alas, where is he these many years and he with no wife to care for him? We do not even know where he is. All the more then must we see to it that your wedding is performed according to law and tradition.”

“Mother,” Yul-han urged, “I beg you let it be as I wish.”

It was now time for Il-han to interfere. “Sunia, we must consider. It is true the times have changed and I am not sure the change is evil. I remember our own wedding day with no great pleasure — all that folly of ashes thrown at me when I left this house to go to yours and all my relatives flocking after me as I went and that wedding chest carrier with his face blackened to make people laugh! And you, with your face painted thick with white powder and your yellow-and-blue coat and red skirt and your family bowing when I came in! And all through the wedding feast we were teased until I was afraid you would cry and streak your painted face. And then when they tied my two legs together and hung me from the beam of the house and they pretended to beat the soles of my feet to make me promise them another feast! Those three nights I spent in your father’s house as bridegroom were not joy, I can tell you, what with teasing friends and neighbors listening at our door.”

Sunia heard this with eyes growing wider as she listened.

“And all these years you have kept this inside yourself!”

Il-han laughed. “Until now, when I bring it out to defend my son!”

They stood, two men against the lone woman, and she could only yield unhappily. She looked at them mutely and Il-han nodded to Yul-han and he went out and brought back the tall handsome girl, whose fresh skin and dark lively eyes showed health. She was not bold, in spite of her composed ways, for she bowed to Il-han and did not speak until he spoke.

He put on his tortoiseshell spectacles and looked at her in silence and then he nodded his head.

“Welcome to my house,” he said. “We break custom here but the times are new.” With this he took off his spectacles. “Forgive me,” he said. “It is not discourtesy that makes me put on spectacles. My eyes are not what they once were.”

This was true, for the midnight teaching by the light of flickering candle made his eyes dim.

“Necessity is no discourtesy nowadays, sir,” she said.

There was no more to say, and in a few minutes she went away as gracefully as she had come, pausing at the door to look back at Sunia.

“If you please, good Mother,” she said sweetly. “Come with me.”

She held out her hand and Sunia could not resist the gentle voice, the pleading eyes. Hand in hand, the two women left the room.

Now Yul-han was left alone with his father and he knew the time had come to confess that Induk was Christian. He did not know whether his father would accept the marriage when he knew, and he had tried to prepare Induk. Indeed only yesterday they had talked long on the necessity and he had begun thus:

“How shall I tell my mother that our wedding will be according to the Christian ceremony? You know how women enjoy our old-fashioned weddings.”

“Leave your mother to me,” Induk had replied. “Tell only your father. If we are wise in what we say, we shall win them separately and each will help us with the other.”

She had a calm assurance, this young female who was to be his wife, and sometimes Yul-han felt a certain awe of her. Where did she find this wisdom? Could it be that her strange religion did indeed communicate a power unknown to him? She never spoke of religion, not even to ask him if he had read the book she had given him, nor did she ask him if he would be Christian too. Yet he knew that she made her prayers to the unknown god, and she went every seven days to the Christian temple. Now and then, however, she spoke of the missionary, sometimes with laughter, for he was very foreign, yet always with respect.

“He is honest,” she told Yul-han, “and he is incorruptible. Moreover, he is for our people. He risks himself for our sakes.”

Beyond this she did not go, except to say her parents wished her to be married with the Christian ceremony, and she also wished this to be. But they had very little time to talk. It was difficult to meet, for old tradition still held in many ways, and if they were seen alone together, tradition might compel those above to dismiss them from their schools on the pretext that their conduct could lead their pupils into unseemly freedom. For this reason Yul-han had urged immediate marriage. Afterwards, as husband and wife, they could discover each other’s minds and hearts in mutuality.

“Father,” Yul-han now said, “I need your good advice.”

Il-han made a dry smile. “Unusual, is it not, in these days, to hear such words? I try to be useful, nevertheless.”

Yul-han ignored this irony natural to age. “What I have to tell you will not shock you, Father, for you know these new times, but I fear for my mother.”

Here he paused so long that Il-han was impatient.

“Well, well, well?” he said sharply.

Yul-han forced himself on. “Her family is Christian, Father, and she wishes to be married with their ceremony.”

He had said it, and properly he had not spoken Induk’s personal name. Sitting motionless on the floor cushion, he took courage to lift his head and look at his father across the low table between them. What he saw was not comforting. His father’s eyebrows were drawn down and beneath them the eyes were narrow under lowered lids. His father’s long thin hand moved to stroke the scanty gray beard.

“Why have you waited to tell me?” Il-han demanded.

“Father, would it have made a difference if I had told you early?”

The long thin hand fell. “You are saying that you would have married her anyway.”

“Yes, Father.”

Father and son gazed into each other’s eyes.

“You two,” Il-han said at last, “you and your brother, inside you are alike. You are both stubborn and willful, he with outbursts of temper and wild words, and you Confucian, always mild in speech. Seemingly without temper, you are the worse of the two. I am always deceived by you.”

“I am sorry, Father,” Yul-han said.

“Sorry! Does that mean you will change yourself?”

“No, Father.”

“I suppose you will be Christian too.”

“I do not know, Father.”

Il-han closed his eyes. He took a black paper fan from his sleeve and fanned himself for a while.

“These Americans,” he said at last, eyes still closed, the fan still moving to and fro. “Do you know that they betrayed us? Have you forgotten that they broke their treaty with us? When we were invaded, they favored the invader. Do they speak now against our oppressors? They do not. They preach their religion, they declare that we must submit ourselves. They say they are not anti-Japanese. They even adjure us to do justice to our oppressors. They bid us remember Korea is the most exposed part of the Japanese empire. Japanese empire, mind you, no longer our country! The Russian base, Vladivostok, is very near, they tell us; it borders Manchuria and by steamboat it is only a few hours from the Chinese port of Chefoo. Therefore Japanese must be allowed to rule Korea!”

Yul-han interrupted. “They won the war with Russia, and—”

Il-han interrupted in turn. “The causes for that war still exist. Russia has no ice-free port on the Pacific.”

“Father,” Yul-han pleaded, “we were talking only of my marriage. Why are we quarreling about governments?”

“Nothing is private nowadays,” Il-han retorted. “If you marry into a Christian family, you undertake their burdens. Do not forget that among the twenty-one Koreans who tried to kill the Prime Minister of Japan who was visiting here, eighteen were Christians!” Here Il-han paused to point his long forefinger at his son. “What was the result? Count Terauchi was sent to rule us without mercy, because he believed that desperate men among us were hiding themselves among the Christians. He surrounds himself with military officers and soldiers. When he goes into our peaceful countryside — I saw it with my own eyes. Only the other day he passed through our villages on his way somewhere, an army swarming about him. Your mother was wailing. She thought they were coming after me. I am not so important any more, I told her.”

“I will not argue with you, Father,” Yul-han said. “I ask only one question. Will you come to my wedding?”

Il-han’s eyebrows shot up. “You insist upon this marriage?”

“Yes, Father,” Yul-han said, very steady.

“Then I will not come,” Il-han declared. “Nor will I allow your mother to come.”

Father and son, they exchanged a long, last look

“I am sorry, Father,” Yul-han said. He made deep obeisance and went away.

… He met Induk the next day, a holiday. The date was the seventeenth day of the fourth lunar month and the sixth day of the sixth solar month. By tradition this day was for the transplanting of rice seedlings from dry earth into watery fields, and though this was done only by landfolk, the day was celebrated by city folk, too, for rice is the food of life.

They had grown wise, these two, in their knowledge of the city and where they could meet, and today they planned to walk outside the gates and along some country road. Their meetings until now had been brief and they had always to be careful of being seen. Today, however, they would be in no haste for they would be far from all who knew them. They met by the west gate, and Yul-han paused to buy two small loaves of bread for their noon meal. Then they turned toward the mountains and away from city and field alike. The sun was already hot as they climbed the unshaded flanks of the bare mountains.

“Here is shelter at last,” Yul-han said.

He left the narrow path and stopped beneath an overhanging rock. Under it they could escape from the burning sun. He smoothed away small stones and lifted moss from the shallow cavern behind the rock and spread it as a floor cushion for her to sit upon. They sat down then, side by side but not too near, each shy of the other in this new loneliness, around them the noble stillness of the mountain and above them the deep and passionate blue of the sky.

In silence Induk poured a small bowl of tea for Yul-han from the bottle she had put in the basket and then one for herself. It was cool and refreshing, they sipped it, and gazed down upon the city they had left. The landscape was splendid, the high rocky mountains guarding the jewel of the city set deep into the green circle of a valley. The sun glittered on the roofs and hid the poverty of huts and crowded streets.

“I am hungry,” Yul-han said.

She gave him bread and broke a loaf in half for herself, and they ate. He felt a peace he had never known before. She was so near that he could put out his hand and take hers, but he had no need to touch her. They were together, committed to a long life ahead, always together. Nothing must be hurried or transient. They were laying deep foundations for the future, even in this silence. He ate his fill and leaned against the bank beneath the rock in profound content.

It was Induk who spoke first. “I have not told you what your mother said when I told her my family is Christian.”

“Tell me,” he said without urgency, his eyes on her calm face.

“At first,” Induk went on, “she could not believe me. Then she was puzzled and she asked me what it meant to be a Christian. Would it mean, she asked, that we would not let her see the children? Assuredly not, I promised her. I said that everything would be the same except that our children would not go to the temple to worship Buddhist gods. Instead they would go to the Christian church and learn the teachings of Jesus. ‘Who is Jesus?’ she asked. When I told her, she was unhappy. ‘He is a foreigner,’ she exclaimed.”

His children Christian? The thought was new and Yul-han was not sure he liked it.

“I had not considered the matter of children,” he said slowly. Far off against the purple-blue sky an eagle soared upward toward the sun.

“Do you not want them to be Christian?” she inquired.

“How can I tell? I know nothing about this religion.”

“But it is mine!”

“Must it be mine?”

She looked at him thoughtfully, considering how to answer. “Have you read the book I gave you?”

“Some of it.”

“What do you think?”

“It is a strange book,” he said in the same slow voice, almost as though he were dreaming. “When one reads it — well, there is a short story in the last part — a revelation. Someone, I do not know who, says that he ate a small book. He had been told to eat it by a spirit from Heaven — or perhaps from Hell, I could not decide, since it is all a sort of poetry, but this man ate the book. It tasted sweet upon his tongue, but when he had eaten it the sweetness went away and the taste was bitter. That is how it was with me. When I read your book it was sweet to my taste, but as I think about it, I feel bitterness.”

“Oh, why?” she asked softly.

“I cannot say,” he replied. “I only feel. It is dangerous to take a new religion in an old country. It is an explosive.”

He did not wish to tell her now what his father had said, not on this first day of their being alone.

“Do you wish me not to be Christian?” she asked after silence.

“I want you to be yourself,” he replied. “Whatever you are, that is what I want you to be.”

“If you are not Christian, I do not wish to be Christian. I will not be separated from you.”

His heart flooded his being with tenderness. What? She would give up so much for him? He could not allow it but he felt his blood warm in his veins.

“Nothing can separate us,” he said, “nothing — nothing! And I give you a promise. I will talk with the missionary. I will learn more about this God in whom you trust. If I can come to the same faith, I will not hold back.”

“But shall we be married by my religion?”

“Yes! I have none of my own any more. The old beliefs have been taken from us and we have been given nothing in return. Why do I say they have been taken from us? Perhaps they have died of their own age and uselessness. Now let us talk no more of these matters. Time will guide us because we love each other.”

He dared to put out his hand now and take her hand and they sat side by side, shy of more than this and yet yearning for more. But the old traditions held. The palm of a man’s hand, they had been taught, must not touch the palm of a woman’s hand, for the palm is a place of communication, where one heart beats close to another heart. It is the first meeting place of love between man and woman, and for these two it was a virgin experience. From it, love would proceed to consummation.

He sat holding her palm against his until he grew afraid of his own rising passion, to which he must not yield.

“Come,” he said resolutely, “it is time for us to go back to the city.”

… Their wedding day was set for the summer solstice, which is on the third day of the lunar month and the twenty-first day of the solar month. Yul-han sent word to his father, and to his mother, and he gave the name of the church where the ceremony would take place. Whether they would be there he did not know, and no letter came from them by servant or by the postal system which the Japanese had reformed and made useful again. Neither he nor Induk spoke of his parents but both waited during the closing days of their schools. In the few days before the wedding he did not return to the grass roof to visit his father, lest his mother insist that he must bring Induk there to live. For Induk wanted a small house of her own and in his heart he planned that he would ask for some of the land he would inherit from his father. He had saved money enough to build a house but he could not buy land, for the cost of land had risen since the Japanese were buying land everywhere. No Korean was able to buy unless he had influence to help him.

The wedding day dawned in mist. The season called the Small Heat was hotter than usual, and the sun hung in the sky like a silver plate.

“Shall I wear my Korean robes?” he had asked Induk.

She had hesitated. “I have never seen you except in this foreign dress, but yes, I would like to marry a Korean in Korean dress.”

He put on his Korean robes, therefore, and his best friend helped him, a teacher of mathematics, surnamed Yi and named Sung-man, a secret revolutionist but a man of merry nature. Sung-man had never married and he made jokes as he helped Yul-han to put on the white robes, and the boat-shaped shoes made from Japanese rubber, and the scholar’s hat of woven horsehair, the crown high, the brim narrow.

Sung-man stared at his tall friend. He himself was a short stout man, not handsome, and clumsy of hand and foot.

“Is it you?” he exclaimed.

“I feel strange to myself,” Yul-han acknowledged, “as though I were my own grandfather.”

Nevertheless thus garbed he walked to the church, Sung-man at his side and taking two steps to his one. So they arrived at the church and went in. The benches were already full of people, men on one side, women on the other. On the platform the missionary stood waiting, dressed in black, and a foreign music came from somewhere, of a sort Yul-han had never heard. He walked up the central aisle looking neither to right nor left, Sung-man behind him, and the missionary motioned to them to stand at his right on the platform. While they stood there waiting suddenly the gentle music changed to loud clear music, very joyous, and Yul-han saw Induk coming up the aisle beside her father. In front of her walked two small boys, her brother’s children as Yul-han knew, scattering flowers as they came, and behind her walked her mother and older sister. But it was at Induk that he looked. She wore a full skirt of pink brocaded satin and a short jacket to match, and her face was half hidden behind a veil of thin white silk. She walked steadily toward him and up the two steps while he waited, trying not to look at her and yet seeing her all the way until she was at his side.

Of that strange marriage ceremony he remembered not a word, except that when he was asked by the missionary if he would have Induk for his wife he replied in a loud voice that he would indeed, and it was only for this purpose that he had come. He was surprised to hear stifled laughter from some women in the audience and he wondered if he had said something he should not have said. The missionary went on, whatever he had said, and in a few minutes, before he could recover himself, he heard the missionary pronounce them man and wife. He hesitated, not knowing what came next, but Induk guided him gently by her hand in the curve of his elbow and he found himself walking down the aisle with her, arm in arm.

He had all but forgotten his parents in the agitation of the ceremony but when he reached the door he saw his father standing at the end of the last bench and passed him near enough to touch his shoulder. Father and son, they looked at each other, the one in gravity, the other in amazed gratitude.

Now he and Induk were at the door and now they had passed through into the outer air. It was over. Yul-han was a married man.

“Why should you build a house?” Sunia demanded. “Our ancestral house is empty of children. When we die it will be yours.”

Yul-han and Induk exchanged looks. How could they explain to his mother that they were different in this generation? Sunia had come to her husband’s house when she was a bride, the house was the home of their ancestors, and where else could she go, or indeed where else would she want to go?

She continued, addressing herself to Induk. “It is because you think I will not have a Christian in my house?”

“Surely not, Mother,” Yul-han said quickly.

But Induk reflected. “Mother, you are right — and wrong. Being Christian does indeed make me different from other young women. You are kind, but you would find me irksome in your house.”

“How are you different?” Sunia demanded, doubtful but determined still to have her own way.

Induk turned to Yul-han. “How am I different?”

He stroked his head, considering. “I have not had time to find out, but different you are.”

Sunia yielded then, complaining privately to Il-han. “She wants to take care only of her husband. Is that a good daughter-in-law? Who brought her precious husband into this world? Who but me?”

“You forget that I—” Il-han began thus but Sunia stopped him.

“Oh you men,” she cried, “you never think whether what you do will produce a child. Yes, yes, you are necessary, else why would a woman spend her life taking care of you? But it is we who create the child and with no more from you than a few drops of water upon an open flower.”

“Peace,” he said with dignity. “Tell me what you want and I will see if it is possible, but do not make me promise that they live with us under our grass roof. These are new times. And I myself do not know whether I want a Christian under the same roof with me.”

The compromise was that Yul-han was to build a house attached to his father’s but with a separate entrance. During the summer months of his great happiness with Induk thereafter Yul-han began the building of his own house. With the help of the one man servant he brought gray stones from the mountains and he cut cedar trees from the forest lands for the pillars to holdup the roof, but to his father’s annoyance Yul-han employed a Japanese roof company to make the roof of tile instead of thatch.

“What,” Il-han exclaimed one day when as usual he walked into the garden to see the new house, “do you buy tiles of the enemy instead of using the good thatch grass from our own fields?”

“Father,” Yul-han replied, not pausing in the work of making a window, “the thatch must be renewed every three or four years, whereas this red tile will last for a century.”

“You are too hopeful,” Il-han retorted. “It is enough to look ahead for a few years. Who knows whether any of us will be alive beyond that?”

“You are too hopeless,” Yul-han retorted gaily.

The house-building was only for the summer until such time as the schools were open after harvest. He must continue his teaching and so must Induk, she at least until she had a child, and in this summer he and Induk lived in a part of the ancestral home, and it was during this time that they both began to understand the sufferings of their people. In the village near which they lived Yul-han heard one night a great wailing of a woman screaming and crying for help. He was working late and alone and was about to break off his labor, for the mosquitoes were singing about his ears, when this voice came to him in waves of agony, borne upon the rising night wind. He put down his plastering trowel and listened.

What he heard were the sobbing words repeated again and again, “O-man-ee, O-man-ee, save me!”

Someone, a girl, was calling on her mother. He listened and then he went to find Induk. She was in the small porch outside the kitchen, pounding his clean clothes smooth on the polished ironing stone. Beside her was a jar of heated charcoal, upon which rested her small, long-handled, pointed iron. He paused to enjoy the picture she made, kneeling on the wooden floor in the light of a paper lantern, the wind blowing her hair as she pounded with two wooden clubs, one in each hand, the folded garment, his shirt as he could see. This wife of his, when she was about her housewifery, could seem the simplest of women. The sound of women pounding the garments smooth was the rhythm and the beat of the Korean countryside.

Without seeing him, Induk lifted the iron from its bed of hot ashes and he spoke.

“A woman is wailing in the village. Something is wrong.”

She put aside the hardwood ironing clubs and the iron. “Let us go,” she exclaimed.

Here was her difference. Where a usual woman would have said it might be dangerous to interfere in another’s troubles and thereby bring down trouble on one’s own house, her thought was only to go and help.

They walked down the road quietly but quickly. The screams had subsided to low moans and these came from one of the village winehouses. Small as the village was, there were three winehouses in it where, before the invaders came, there had been none. These winehouses were places where men came to drink and to seek women. In the deep poverty of the landfolk it was easy to buy girls for such places and few indeed were the girls who dared to rebel when such employment was all that kept their families from starving.

“Let me go in alone,” Induk said when they reached the door of this lowly house of pleasure.

“I will not let you enter such a place alone,” Yul-han declared.

Together then they went in. A slatternly old woman came toward them from behind the gate.

“We are neighbors,” Induk explained, “and we heard someone wailing and we thought you might need help.”

The old woman peered at them from smoke-blinded eyes and replied not a word. Before Induk could go further a young girl ran out of the house, her garments half torn from her body, her hair in disarray and her face scratched and bleeding. A man ran after her. Induk put out her arms and caught the girl, and Yul-han stood between her and the man.

This man did not at first recognize Yul-han since he had lived in the city for the later years of his life and the man pushed up his sleeves and made as if to attack Yul-han.

“Take care of yourself,” Yul-han said to him with calm. “I am her husband.”

The man was taken aback by this and he stared at the two of them.

“Then why are you here?” he demanded.

Induk stepped in front of the girl and it was she who answered. “We heard a cry for help.”

The man looked at her insolently. “You must be Christians!”

“I am a Christian,” Induk said quietly.

The man sneered at her, showing his teeth like a dog. “You Christians! You are everywhere that you should not be. One of these days something will happen to all of you.”

“Are you Korean?” Yul-han demanded. “How is it that you speak like a Japanese?”

The man looked at him sullenly. “I paid money for this girl. She belongs to me.”

The girl now spoke for herself. “I belong to no one. I was cheated! You told me I had only kitchen work to do — not that — ha, I spit on you!”

With this she spat on the man full face, and he bellowed at her and lunged for her but Yul-han pushed him aside and he fell to the ground.

“Do not forget that I am the son of my father,” he said sternly.

The man clambered out of the dust and stepped back. “One of these days,” he muttered. “One of these days …”

He brushed his clothes and turned his back on them and Yul-han led the way out of the gate and to his own house, in silence. He was too prudent not to inquire of himself what they should do with this girl. She was the daughter of a farmer, he supposed, perhaps even of a man on their own land, and he knew that this incident might bring trouble down on him from the capital. The Kim family was too famous to escape notice, whatever they did. Only his father’s continued absence from the city and from the King had made them safe. Now he, Yul-han, had married a Christian, and it could not be imagined that this was not known to the authorities, for they knew everything and penetrated to the smallest village and to the last corner of every house. Even the man at the winehouse might be in the pay of the authorities, for there were many spies among the Koreans, low fellows who would do anything for money.

When they reached the house, Induk bade the girl wash herself and smooth her hair.

“What shall I do now?” the girl asked.

“Wait for me in the kitchen,” Induk told her.

With this Yul-han and Induk went aside into the bedroom to consider what they had done. Neither knew how to begin. It was Yul-han who spoke first.

“The time has come,” he said thoughtfully. “I must declare myself on one side or the other. Either I am a Christian or I am not a Christian. If I am to follow you into every trouble where your religion guides you, then I must share your religion. When we are summoned, as sometime we shall be, I cannot say that you are Christian and I am not. They will ask me why I allow you to interfere in the lives of others, for you will continue to interfere, I can see that.”

Tears came into Induk’s eyes. “But we are told — it is the command of Christ that we must bear the burdens of the weak!”

“So we will bear them,” Yul-han said resolutely. “Otherwise we shall be parted, you and I — you driven by your conscience in one direction and I — what? Prudently staying at home, I suppose! Then sooner or later you will hate me — or I may hate you. This is a Christian marriage. You make it so by being what you are.

“You are not to be Christian because I am,” she insisted.

“I am Christian because I must be, if I am your husband,” he retorted. “Otherwise our paths diverge, and that I cannot accept.”

She let tears fall now. “You make a monster of me,” she sobbed.

He took her hand and put the palm to his lips. “Not a monster,” he said, “only a Christian.”

He drew her to him by this hand. “I shall not enter blindly into your religion, I will study and understand. I must be convinced as well as converted. Now cease these tears. You should be happy.”

“I want to be a good wife,” she whispered against his breast. “I would die before I bring you into danger.”

He did not reply for awhile as he smoothed her dark hair. Both knew what she meant. In the last few days they had heard fresh news of the increasing harshness of the ruling government toward the Christians. Whenever Christians sought to work against some evil circumstance, the rulers declared that by so doing they rebelled against the authorities, until all over the country helpless simple Christians were seized and accused of rebellion when what they did was only against an evil which, according to their doctrines, they must oppose, whatever the government.

“It is better if we face danger together,” Yul-han said.

At this moment a voice spoke from the door. It was the girl, who had grown weary of waiting. She stood there, her two feet planted widely apart, her bare arms hanging at her sides, her hair neat and her sun-browned face red with scrubbing.

“What do you want me to do next, mistress?” she demanded.

Yul-han and Induk parted and Yul-han turned his back properly on the girl.

“What shall we do with you?” Induk countered. “Shall we not send you home again to your parents?”

“If you send me home,” the girl said, her country accent thick on her tongue, “the wineshop owner will only get me back again, since he has paid for me. He has a license from the Japanese police. How can we escape him? I will stay here with you and do your work if you will feed me.”

Induk was perplexed. She had saved the girl and now must be responsible for the life she had saved!

“What is your name?” she asked.

“I am called Ippun,” the girl said, and stood waiting, her eyes, small above her high cheekbones, beseeching and helpless and her big mouth hanging open.

What could they do then but let her stay? Therefore she slept in a corner of the kitchen at night, and by day she worked without rest, as devoted as a dog to its owners. Not knowing what else to do, Yul-han and Induk accepted her as a member of the household.

“Though you call it a gospel of love, yours is a hard doctrine,” Yul-han said one morning in late summer.

He was seated on a chair beside a high table in the vestry of the Christian church in the city. The missionary sat opposite him, the book open before him, and Yul-han thought secretly that he had never before seen so craggy a face, or one so ugly in features and yet so noble in spirit, the blue eyes deep-set under brushy red eyebrows, the pitted white skin, the high nose broken, it seemed, in the bridge, the wide mouth and big teeth. Altogether the face was formidable and so were the huge hairy hands and the strong hairy neck. Under its clothing, was that thick strong body also covered with red hair?

“So you think Christianity is hard,” the missionary said.

“It is,” Yul-han replied, “hard even in its doctrine of love. What is more cruel than the command to turn the right cheek to the enemy when a blow has been struck on the left?”

“What is hard about that?” the missionary demanded.

East and West faced each other across the table. “Imagine to yourself,” Yul-han said earnestly, “if I am struck on this cheek”—he put his narrow, aristocratic hand to his right cheek—“and I turn this cheek”—he turned his head—“what am I doing to the man who strikes me? I am saying to him without words that I am his superior, one far above him in spirit. I am compelling him to examine himself. He has given way to evil temper — I am daring him to do so again and thus prove how evil he is. What can he do? He will be ashamed of himself, he will slink away, condemned by his own conscience. Is this not cruel? Is this not hard? I think so.”

The missionary shook his head. “You make me see things I have not seen before.”

He was silent for a while and then he took up the book and read aloud from the sayings of Paul. Yul-han listened and after some time he held up his hand for pause. He repeated the lines which he had just heard.

“‘Dare any of you, having a matter against his neighbor, go to law before the unrighteous and not before the saints?’ Do you not see what burden this places upon your innocent Korean Christians?”

“Burden?” the missionary repeated.

“It puts them in danger of death,” Yul-han said bluntly.

“Death?”

“Do you think the rulers will be pleased when our people come to you instead of to them?”

“There are many Christians in Japan,” the missionary said.

“Ah, but there the Church is ruled by Japanese Christians, some of them of high rank. Here it is true that the Church is composed of Koreans — how many did you say? two hundred and fifty thousand — a good number, but the Japanese do not rule the Church here. And my people when they become Christians are altogether devoted — there is too little else in our life nowadays. I feel the need in myself for enrichment and faith and some sort of inspiration. There seems no hope ahead. Some of us, like my father, find refuge in writing poetry and studying ancient literature. But what of those who have no such learning and no such talent? They are finding their interest in the Christian Church and in strong men from the West like you, through whom they seek connection with that outer world, a stream of culture new and modern from which we are cut off by the invaders.”

The missionary was listening, his blue eyes fixed on Yul-han’s face with intensity and comprehension.

“Go on,” he said, when Yul-han paused.

“Look at my town,” Yul-han said. “Say there are some eight or nine thousand people there, such a town for example as Syunchun. Half of the people there are Christian. The church and the mission school are the largest buildings and the best. A thousand, two thousand people, go to church and to your other meetings. In the surrounding villages there are many Christians, too. What do the Japanese rulers think when they see the vast crowds of Christians and these meetings in which they themselves have no part? They smell rebellion and revolution and so they send their spies to the meetings to listen and to report. These spies hear your Christians singing ‘Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war.’ What was that song you bade them sing in the church this morning? ‘Stand up, stand up for Jesus, ye soldiers of the Cross.’ And what did you preach, you American soldier of the Cross? You told us the story of a young man named David, who with a small sling and a few pebbles killed the powerful evil giant, Goliath. And how was it that David could kill the giant and whence had he his power? Weak as he was, young as he was, his heart was pure, his cause was just, and so with God’s help he prevailed. This is what you teach us. And we, hopeless as we are, crushed and lost, how can we but believe you, since we have nothing else in which to believe, our past useless, our future hopeless?”

Here Yul-han stopped, moved by his own words. He struggled against secret tears, his head downcast. When he conquered himself and lifted his head again he saw across the table the missionary gazing at him and in his strange blue eyes was a burning demand.

“Will you be one of us?”

“Yes,” Yul-han said. “I will be a Christian.”

Sunia woke in the night. Someone was creeping along the narrow porch, feeling the latches of the paper-latticed doors. She was suddenly tense, listening. Yes, someone was there. She must wake Il-han. Then she hesitated. He needed sleep, for he had been sleepless for several nights, fearful lest Japanese gendarmes appear at the gate, demanding to know why he gathered schoolchildren into his house after midnight. He had been warned by Ippun that there was such talk in the village.

“It is that wineshop owner,” she had whispered. “He is angry because your son has sheltered me. When I went to the market yesterday he shouted at me that I would soon be back in the wineshop and the Kim family would be in prison.”

Il-han had refused to appear afraid and he had continued his midnight school until two days ago, when Japanese gendarmes had indeed marched into the village to get themselves drunk in the wineshop and lay hold on the girls there. He had then sent word secretly to the parents of his pupils that they must not come again until he told them. But he had remained uneasy even at his books and sleepless at night.

Leaning over him in the moonlight, Sunia saw now how wan his face was and how sunken his cheeks. No, let him sleep. She would go and see who the intruder was. Perhaps it was only a neighbor’s dog. She crept out of bed and stole across the floor in her bare feet and soundlessly she slid back the door screen an inch and peered through the crack. A man stood there, a tall thin figure in a torn garment. She pushed the screen open a few inches more and spoke suddenly and strongly.

“Thief! What are you doing here?”

The man turned to her and she heard his voice subdued and deep.

“O-man-ee!”

Not since her sons were children had she heard herself thus called “Mother.”

“You — you—” She pushed the screen open wildly, it caught and she could not get through the narrow space and she began to sob. “Son — my son — Yul-chun—”

“Hush,” he whispered.

He lifted the screen from its runway and set it to one side, and took her in his arms. She clung to him.

“So tall,” she murmured, distracted, “so much taller — your bones sticking out — and you are in rags—”

She drew him into the house, crying and talking under her breath.

“Where have you been? No, wait, say nothing — I must call your father — here, drink some tea — still hot — no, it is cold — I will heat some food—”

He took her by the shoulders and shook her. “Mother, listen to me! I have no time. I must leave before sunrise. I took a risk — dangerous for me and for you both, you and my father. I have been sent here to our country — I cannot tell you why — or where I shall be — I must not come home — perhaps never again — Nobody knows what will happen.”

She was immediately calm. “Why have you not written to us?”

“I dared not write.”

“Where have you been these many years?”

“In China.”

China! She breathed the name of that unhappy country. She had seldom heard it spoken after the murder of the Queen.

“You must tell your father,” she said resolutely and drawing him by the hand she led him into the room where Il-han still slept.

She hated to wake him, yet she must for he would not forgive her if he were not waked. She began with slow soothing touches on his forehead, his cheeks, his hands. He stirred, he opened his eyes. She leaned close to his ear.

“Our son is here — our elder son!”

His face, bewildered, changed to consciousness. He sat upright in his bed. “What — where—”

“I am here, my father,” Yul-chun said. He knelt beside his father and Il-han looked into his face.

“Where have you been?” he asked as Sunia had.

“In China, Father — with the revolutionists.”

Il-han rubbed his face with his hands and stared afresh at his son. “You,” he said at last—“had you anything to do with the death of the old Empress? Was she murdered there as the Queen was murdered here?”

“No, Father. She died of old age.”

“They overthrew the Dragon Throne, those revolutionists!”

“Father, it had to be overthrown. The dynasty was dead. The rulers were corrupt. The old Empress held the empire together by her two hands.”

“Who are the rulers now?”

“The revolutionists will set up a republic like the American republic. The people will choose their rulers.”

Il-han was suddenly sharply awake and angry. “Folly! How can people choose a ruler when they are ignorant of such matters? I have been in America and you have not. Their people know how to choose — they vote — they — they—”

Sunia interrupted. “You two men, you have not seen each other, father and son, for how many years? Yet you quarrel over governments! Il-han, this son of ours has only a little while to stay with us. He must be on his way—”

“Where?” Il-han demanded.

“I cannot tell you, Father.”

“You are a spy?”

“I have a mission.”

“Then you are a spy!”

“Call me what you wish,” Yul-chun said. “I work for Korea.”

Il-han got out of bed and tied his robe about him and coiled his hair as he went on talking. “You will be caught and killed. Do you think you are more clever than these rogues who have spies in every winehouse? Count yourself dead.”

“I have stayed alive all these years, Father.”

“I do not know how,” Sunia put in. “You look starved.”

With this she hurried out of the room and to the kitchen to heat food.

“Come into the other room,” Il-han said. He led the way to his library and took his usual place on the floor cushion behind the low desk table.

“Now,” he said. “Tell me all that you will.”

Yul-chun knelt on the opposite floor cushion, his knees bare through his rags.

“Father,” he said in the low hurried half-whisper which seemed now his habit, “I cannot tell you anything. It is better for you to know nothing. If one day you are asked if I am your son, say that you have never seen me.”

Il-han’s eyes opened wide. “That I will never do!”

The haggard, troubled face, the face of his son, softened. For a moment Yul-chun looked as young as he was. He forgot to whisper.

“Do you remember how we used to walk in the bamboo grove, you and I, Father, when I was so small that you held my hand?”

“I remember,” Il-han said, and his throat tightened with pain. How had that soft childish face changed to this man’s face? He tried to clear his throat. “That was long ago — you can scarcely remember.”

“I do remember,” Yul-chun said. “I remember the day my brother was born, and I broke the bamboo shoots, and you told me they would never come up again. You were right, of course, those broken shoots did not grow again. Hollow reeds, you called them. I felt my heart ready to break at what I had done. But then you told me that other reeds would come up to take their place. And every spring I went to the bamboo grove to see if what you said was true. It was always true.”

Yul-chun rose to his feet and Il-han rose, too. Face to face, at the same height, they gazed into each other’s eyes.

“What do you tell me?” Il-han demanded.

“This,” Yul-chun said, “that if you never see me again, or never hear my name again, remember — I am only a hollow reed. Yet if I am broken, hundreds take my place — living reeds!”

He hesitated, looking at his father as if he had something to say and would not say it. Then suddenly he did speak, but leaning forward close to his father and in the half-whisper.

“I cannot come again — not soon, perhaps never. But sometimes you will find under the door in the morning a printed sheet — read it and burn it.”

He looked about him uncertainly then and muttered to himself. “The sun is rising. I must be gone.”

The sun was indeed creeping over the earthen wall, and with these few words Yul-chun was gone.

A moment later Sunia came in weeping. “I had his food hot and ready for him, but he went away hungry. Oh Buddha, why was I born in these times?”

Who could answer the question? Il-han could only summon her to his side, and there they sat, hand in hand, an aging man and woman whose children had been swept away from them. They were alone in a world they did not know.

A dry hot summer after the rainy season led into autumn. The grass on the mountains ripened and the land people cut it with short-handled sickles and bound it into sheaves for winter fuel. Against the shorn flanks of the mountains again the tall narrow poplar trees burned like golden candles. Under their grass roof Il-han and Sunia lived each day like the one before, and each night Il-han taught his pupils. He seldom saw his second son, for Yul-han and Induk returned to the city during their days of teaching.

“Shall we not tell our second son that his elder brother returned to us?” Sunia asked.

Il-han had already asked himself the question and his answer was ready. “We do not know this woman he has married. A Christian? She is like a foreigner. No. It is better if no one knows that our elder son is alive. Let him be forgotten by all except his parents. He is safe with us.”

In silence then Il-han and Sunia lived their lives, and when Yul-han came to visit them in duty they were courteous and made inquiry of how he felt and how he liked his work in his new school, and when he inquired of their health they said they were well and as for happiness, who could have happiness now?

In the eighth month of that moon year, the tenth month of the sun year, two days after the season date of Cold Dew, a fresh trouble fell upon the people. The Japanese Governor-General, Count Terauchi, then on a journey toward the north, barely escaped death at the hands of a Korean assassin at the railroad station in the city of Syun-chun. The news spread to every ear and silence fell upon the people, silence of dread and terror. All remembered the murder of the first Resident-General, Prince Ito, before Korea had been formally annexed to the Japanese empire. Though that prince was a kindly man and one who endeavored to make his rule gentle and even just, insofar as he was able, he had been killed by a Korean exile in the city of Harbin in the country of Manchuria. In reprisal the Japanese put the whole of Korea under military rule. Each Governor-General was now surrounded wherever he went by a bodyguard of soldiers, ruthless in their duty to preserve his life.

In spite of this, however, it seemed that the Korean conspirators did all but succeed in their goal. There was a great gathering of people to greet the Governor-General upon his arrival at Syun-chun. Schoolboys from both Christian and public schools were in line on the platform among other Koreans and some Japanese. All Koreans were searched by police for weapons concealed on their persons before they were allowed on the platform. Yet, in spite of precautions, a man was able to hide a revolver somewhere on himself, or had another given to him after he was searched. Who could know?

The Governor-General walked up and down the lines of students, he shook hands with the school principals, among whom were two or three missionaries from Christian schools, one of them American. When he turned to enter the special armored train upon which he traveled, a slender tall man appeared suddenly from among the Christians, in his uplifted right hand a revolver. A shot pierced the air but too high to reach its target. Soldiers swarmed upon the students, pushing them helter-skelter, but none could discover who the assassin was, or whether he was in student uniform. All in the vicinity were arrested, both students and others, in the hope that one would confess the deed. They were thrown into prison, guilty or not, and there waited until trial was held.

This was the news, and Il-han learned of it from the small sheet he found one morning under the door. Ever since Yul-chun had left, Il-han had risen before dawn while Sunia slept to see if there was such a sheet of paper under the door. One morning there it was, a bit of cheap paper, the printing blotted. Who was the assassin? Was it Yul-chun? For this purpose had he returned to his own land? Il-han pondered the dreadful question in his own heart and could find no answer. He resolved that he would not divide his burden by telling Sunia. Let her live her woman’s life, make her kimchee and mend their winter clothes! And if Yul-chun were locked in some cold prison throughout the winter, at least he was alive and safe. Safe? How could he speak the foolish word? His son would be beaten and tortured when he would not confess.

Now Il-han understood the lesson of the hollow reed. When one died, another took his place — if one must die!

Throughout the winter Il-han kept his own silence. His flesh fell away from his bones and Sunia fretted by day because he would not eat and by night because he could not sleep. He took to hiding himself from her when he washed or when he changed his inner garments, for she cried out when she saw him.

“Oh, your poor bare bones,” she mourned. “When I remember you on our wedding night—”

“Be quiet, woman,” he said. And then when he saw her face he tried to laugh. “If I do not please you, look elsewhere.”

It was a grim joke, an aging man and woman, exiles in their own country, hair graying, faces lined, alone in their house.

Still he did not tell Sunia his burden, nor did he tell his second son.

The winter wore on. Through snow and ice his pupils came in the black of the night, but now not every night. The attempt to assassinate the Governor-General had set the rulers into such fury that everywhere more spies roamed among the people. No village was free of them, no country road lonely enough to escape them. Even women were seized and questioned and punished, and this at first because they were Christian.

There was some reason here, for the girls in the Christian schools were more daring than others, and again it was in the news sheet that Il-han read the story, without date or place:

In a Christian day school, in another city, the girls resigned their places. The American woman who was their principal was troubled when they did so, but her pupils laughed and said they would not have her whom they loved punished for what they might do. That same evening she was summoned by the Chief of Police. She made haste to go to his office and he led her to the main street and there were her pupils, waving banners they had made, demanding the release of the prisoners who were accused of plotting to assassinate the Governor-General. The girls had stirred up the citizens and men had joined them and began to shout against the Chief of Police.

Not all Japanese were cruel, and this Chief was in distress. “I cannot arrest them all,” he exclaimed. “The prison is already full.”

The missionary went out and pleaded with the girls to go home, but they only embraced her and greeted her with cheers, and they would not listen.

“Arrest me, then,” she told the Chief of Police. “I will take their place.”

He was a man of good heart, however, and he refused, for the missionary was a small old woman, her hair white, her pale face wrinkled and her eyes very blue and brave.

“I will tell them you will arrest me if they do not go home and I demand that you arrest me if they do not obey,” she declared.

What could her pupils say when she stood before them, her white hair blowing in the winter wind? They looked at each other, and their leader said to those men who had gathered to help them, “You men, fight on! At least we have shamed you into battle.” And so saying, she led them home.

This story Il-han read in the early dawn, forgetting to shut the door while he read, and the cold wind blew through his thin garments and chilled the marrow in his bones. He took the sheet and put it in the kitchen stove and lit a match and held his hands to warm them over the quickly dying flame. All that day he thought of the woman Yul-han loved, and in spite of himself his heart softened toward his son because of the brave schoolgirls who were Christian.

Not all women were treated so kindly by the police. Students continued in many cities to rebel and girls were beaten and kicked by police wearing heavy boots. The printed sheets lay almost daily now under Il-han’s door.

“I was cross-questioned three times,” a girl student said. “A police officer accused me of wearing straw shoes. I said my father was in prison and for me it was as though he were dead, and I wear the shoes of mourning.

“‘It is a lie,’ the officer said and with his hands he pulled my mouth so wide that it bled. Then he forced me to open my jacket to show my breasts and he sneered at me, saying, ‘I congratulate you.’ Then he slapped me and struck my head with a stick until I was dazed, and he said, ‘Did the foreigners teach you to rebel?’ I told him I knew no foreigners except the principal of the school. Then he yelled at me that I was pregnant and when I said I was not, since I was not married, he ordered me to take off all my clothes. He said he knew the Christian Bible, and it teaches that if people are sinless they may go naked. Were not Adam and Eve naked in the Garden of Eden? Only when they sinned did they hide themselves. He tried to take off my clothes and I fought him. And while he said these vile things the Korean interpreter stood sorrowfully by, refusing to speak, so that the officer had to use his own broken Korean, and he was angry and ordered the Korean to beat me, but the Korean said he would not beat a woman and he would bite his hand off first, so the officer beat me with his own fists.”

Il-han read this and he kept his silence, but he knew the storm that was rising among his own people. Out of the depths of their despair the storm was rising. Throughout the months of that dreary year many Koreans were taken prisoner and every Christian was suspect. If the women were among them, they were treated with obscenities, and those who were young were abused in special ways. All this Il-han read in the small sheets of paper thrust under his door. Still he kept his silence even with Sunia and with Yul-han.

In the fourth month of that sun year, when spring was come, trials were proclaimed for those who had been accused of the attempted assassination of the Governor-General. The day set to begin was the twenty-eighth day of the sixth sun month and Il-han prepared to attend the trials.

The morning of that day dawned with a red sun in a sky white with heat, and Sunia scolded him.

“Why must you go to the city this day of all days? Crowds, dust, noise — you are too old for such things on a hot day. And what if you are recognized? Though who will see in your bag of bones the handsome man you are—”

She scolded him through tears of tenderness and he knew the tenderness and said not a word while she helped him to put on the garments she had washed snowy white for him and pounded smooth and ironed until not a crease remained. She tied the strings of his hat under his beard and bade his old servant take the packet of cold rice and beans she had prepared for his meal and the jar of tea, and she stood at the gate and watched them walking down the village street toward the city, Il-han’s skirt swaying from side to side as he planted one foot after the other in the fashion that old scholars walk, their toes turned outward. She felt a deep aching pain in her breast and watching those two she began quietly to weep, for what reason she did not know except that life had become a burden she could scarcely bear. And yet bear it she must, for what would Il-han do without her? Impatient with him she often was, and too quickly, and why, when she loved him, she said something unloving, she did not know.

“I am a sinful woman,” she muttered, her eyes on his tall frame, dwindling in the distance, “but of all sins, there is one I will not commit. I will not die before you, my husband — I promise — I promise—”

… The sun was well over the horizon when Il-han reached the hall where the trials were to be held. It was a special building behind the district court and built for the purpose for these hearings, a large place some eighty-four or eighty-five feet long and thirty feet wide. The door was open wide, but guarded by soldiers.

“Where is your permit, old man?” a soldier asked when Il-han came to the door. “You cannot walk in as though you were the Governor-General.”

Il-han did not know such a permit was necessary. He drew himself up to his best height, and stared at the soldier.

“I am Kim,” he said with strong dignity. “My name is Il-han.”

The soldier hesitated, but seeing before him a gentleman of rank, he allowed Il-han to enter. Inside the hall Il-han now saw the prisoners already seated in two groups in the middle, each group divided into smaller ones of ten men, manacled together. On the sides were seats for the counsels and for reporters. At one end of the hall were the seats for the judges, and at the other end were seats for the people. The prisoners were separated from both judges and people by a barrier, and Il-han pushed his way as closely as he could to this barrier so that he might see the faces of the prisoners. He searched each face and cursed the dimness of his eyes because those in the center were not clear. Was Yul-chun there? He could only wait for the trials to proceed.

Alas, the whole morning was wasted in preparations. Impatiently he waited while after long delay the judges took their places, their interpreters beside them, one Japanese, one Korean. Impatience grew in him while the names of the prisoners were read. He did not hear his son’s name and if Yul-chun were there, it could only mean that he used a false name. The indictment was then read, an hour in length, another hour in translation from Japanese into Korean.

By this time the judges were hungry and the Court adjourned for an hour. In the hour Il-han ate his food and drank his tea and made haste to return early and get himself a seat again next to the barrier, but on the opposite side from where he had sat before. Behind it the prisoners waited, unfed and thirsty. One man just inside the barrier, within reach of his hand, sat with his back toward him and his head bowed. His hair was cut short as all prisoners had their hair cut, so that this man’s neck showed bone thin and slender as a broken bamboo. Through the holes in his ragged garments his shoulder blades stood out like wings. The garment was filthy and soaked with sweat, for heat filled the hall with a hot fog, a miasma of evil odors and stagnant air. Il-han, observing this prisoner, saw his body heave in great gasps, and with instinctive pity he seized his half-empty jar of tea from his servant, crouching on the floor at his feet, and he reached over the low barrier and held the bottle before the prisoner. A claw of a hand, the man’s right hand, grasped the bottle, and in that instant Il-han recognized the hand. It was the hand of his son. It was the hand of Yul-chun.

He fell back into his seat, overwhelmed by a sudden giddiness. His thoughts whirled in his head, a mass of confused colors and shapes. What should he do? What could he do? He felt impelled to cry aloud that this was his son, and his son must be released. He put down the impulse. His son did not know it was he who had given the bottle. He watched while Yul-chun drank the tea in great gulps. Before he could finish, a guard saw him drinking and he came up to the barrier and snatched the bottle away.

“Who gave you this bottle?” he bawled.

“I found it in my hand,” Yul-chun said.

The guard turned and glared at all those near the barrier. Since Il-han sat nearest, he fixed upon him.

“Was it you, old man?”

Il-han was too dazed to speak and before he could recover, his servant spoke for him. “This old man is stone deaf,” he said. “He cannot hear you.”

The guard, getting no better answer from the fearful people, satisfied himself with striking a blow on Yul-chun’s right shoulder, and so heavily that blood trickled out from the broken flesh and mingled with the sweat, but Yul-chun did not move, not even to lift his head.

Now the judges returned and the trials began again and Il-han gathered his wits together to understand what was said. The first prisoner summoned was a teacher in a Christian school, a thin tall young man who had, it seemed, confessed the day before the trials that he had been compelled by the missionary American who was the headmaster of the school to appear at the place of the assassination. Now he denied what yesterday he had confessed. He denied, too, that he was a member of the New Peoples Society, to which yesterday he had also confessed. The judge, hearing these denials, was indignant.

“How can you deny before the Court today what yesterday you confessed to the procurator?” the judge demanded.

The man, who said he was once a corporal in the Korean army but was now a gymnastics teacher in a Christian school, replied, “I made false confessions yesterday because I was tortured by the authorities.”

“What!” the judge exclaimed in further anger. “You, a teacher, demean yourself to make false confessions because of torture?”

The man said doggedly that he could not hold out longer, and so he had lied. To all further questions he repeated no, he had never been visited by a ringleader in the conspiracy; no, he had never heard the plot discussed; no, he had not told the missionary of such a plot; no, he did not know there was a party of conspirators armed with revolvers at the railroad station at Syun-chun on the day of the attempted assassination; no, he had not even heard that the Governor-General was passing there; no, he did not know whether students in the school had been approached by the ringleader in the conspiracy; no, neither he nor his pupils had revolvers — how could they, when all were searched before being allowed on the platform?

So went the questions and answers, the prisoner standing in dogged patience until the questioner for the Court grew more and more loud in his demands. He pointed to a large box on the platform.

“Do you not know that this box was kept in the Christian school and in it were hidden revolvers?”

“I only went to the school to teach gymnastics. I know nothing else,” the prisoner replied.

The judge now lost patience and shouted.

“Next prisoner!”

The next prisoner, a squat, sturdy fellow who said he was thirty-eight years old and a farmer, answered all questions in the same fashion as had the first prisoner. He knew nothing of the New Peoples Society, nothing of the alleged meetings in the Christian schools; nothing of the purchase of revolvers or of assassination. He had never given money to buy revolvers, nor had he heard speeches against the Governor-General. Neither did he know whether the missionary headmaster had told the story of David and Goliath, and he knew nothing about the story, or about David or Goliath; no, he did not know which was the brave man, David or Goliath, yes, he had before confessed that he knew all these matters, but his confession was false and made under extreme torture.

The judge now became grim. He ordered the prisoner dismissed and the next man brought forward. Il-han had fully recovered his wits and he listened with both ears and his entire attention. The pattern of the trials was becoming clear. Under his son’s instruction, for who but Yul-chun could conceive so clever a plan, each prisoner denied every charge to which he had before confessed, saying that he had confessed only under extreme torture. The judges, the entire Court, also perceived the pattern, and the trials went on in ominous calm until evening. Then the Court adjourned until the next morning.

“I will not go home,” Il-han said to his servant. “Find me a bed in an inn and tell the mother of my sons that here I stay until the trials are concluded.”

The man obeyed, and Il-han ate a hearty meal at the inn and laid himself down on a mattress in a room with three traveling merchants. Pulling his quilt to his neck, he reviewed the day and marveled again at his son’s cleverness, and laughed under his beard, and then slept as he had not slept for many a night.

The second day of the trials proceeded exactly as the first, except that Il-han overslept and arrived too late to seat himself close to the barrier. He could not tell, therefore, where Yul-chun sat, and he could only stretch his head high to watch for his son’s appearance in the prisoners’ dock. All day he waited, listening to each prisoner deny the confession made before under torture. Most of these prisoners were young men, teachers or pupils from Christian schools, and the more he heard the more alarmed Il-han became for his second son lest he, too, become Christian. Fourteen men were examined on this second day. David and Goliath were also discussed, but all fourteen prisoners denied knowing these characters, although one young man of weak intellect said that he believed David was considered the braver of the two. Nothing else did the fourteen know. So ended the second day of the trial, and Il-han returned in high spirit to the inn, where his servant waited with a dish of kimchee from Sunia, who said the kimchee at the inn doubtless was not fit to eat.

The third day was not different from the first and the second. To the questions asked before, only a few new questions were added.

“Did the American Christian headmaster address the students, urging them to be bold and undertake a great effort?”

“Did you go to the railway station disguised as a Christian student?”

“Did you not see American Christian missionaries signal their pupils as the Governor-General walked along the platform?”

“Did you tell the students at the Taiyong Christian School to inspire one another with the same ideas that were declared by the assassin of Prince Ito in Harbin?”

“Do you not remember the names of the men to whom revolvers were given?”

“Do you not know that a man came from Pyongyang to Syun-chun to warn the members of the New Peoples Society that the Governor-General was coming?”

To all these questions the answer was no, and to the charge of previous confessions, the plea was duress under torture.

So it went until the eighth day. Nor were the prisoners only students. Some were Christian pastors, some were merchants, but all denied any part in the conspiracy. At last on the evening of the eighth day Il-han saw Yul-chun on the stand. He wore the same rags, but around his head he had wound a towel to hide his cropped hair. Now Il-han strained his attention to hear every word. He had come this eighth day at dawn, so that he might be as close as possible to the stand, knowing that this must be the day for which he had waited so long. His heart beat heavily in his bosom and he felt half choked as he heard the first question.

“What is your name?”

“I am called The Living Reed.”

“In the eighth month two years ago you went to Kwaksan to tell the local members of the New Peoples Society of the arrival of the Governor-General whom it had first been decided to assassinate at Chanyon-kwan. Is this true?”

“I admitted it under torture but it is not true.”

“You bought revolvers in Manchuria with money given you by the merchant Oh Hwei-wen. Is this true?”

“I admitted it under torture but it is not true.”

“You went with others also to Wiju to assassinate the Governor-General there.”

“I admitted it under torture, but it cannot be true. The platform at Wiju is too small — we would have been noticed.”

“In the spring of 1909, when Prince Ito accompanied the King of Korea on a tour of inspection, did you not determine to attack the Prince at Chanyon-kwan? Then as the imperial train did not stop there, you took the next train and followed Prince Ito to another station. Is this true?”

“I admitted it under torture but it is not true.”

“Do you know that the object of the New Peoples Society is to build a military school, to assassinate high officials, and to wage a war to establish the independence of Korea if war breaks out with China or America?”

“I do not know such a thing. If I admitted it under torture when I was half conscious it is not true.”

At this moment the judge, a Japanese general of high rank, lost his temper. He pounded the table before him with his clenched fists.

“Torture — torture! What is this torture?”

In the same steady voice with which he answered all questions, Yul-chun replied.

“My arms were bound behind my back with ropes of silk. They cut into my flesh. Two sticks were put between my legs, which were then bound tightly together at my knees and ankles. Two policemen twisted these sticks. Pieces of bamboo, three-cornered, were tied between my fingers and tied so tightly that my flesh was torn from my bones. Day after day I was pulled out flat on the floor and beaten with split bamboo until my back was raw. Each night I was thrown into an underground dungeon where I lay in wet and slime. Each day I was taken out for torture again. I do not know how many days. I was not always conscious.”

The spell of the clear steady voice, the strong simple words telling of terrors worse than death, fell upon all alike. When Yul-chun finished speaking, he turned his head and looked at his father. His face did not change, he made no sign of recognition, but, father and son, the two men met.

“Next prisoner!” the judge shouted.

When Yul-chun came down from the stand Il-han rose from his place and left the hall. He had seen what he came to see, he had heard what he must know, and he walked the long road home to his grass roof. Behind him his servant followed, and in silence. Slowly and steadily the two men plodded their way home in the twilight. The evening air was still and hot, and the miles were many and seemed longer than they were. Il-han reached home at last and Sunia met him at the door and cried out in fright

“You look like a mountain ghost! What is wrong?”

“Ask me nothing,” he said. “It is better for you not to know.”

And however she begged him and scolded him and argued with him, he would not tell her.

“It is better for you not to know,” he said.

The trials ended and many prisoners were kept in prisons for long years, even for the rest of their lives, but some were beheaded. Whether Yul-chun was among these Il-han did not know, nor could he find out unless he asked Yul-han’s help. This he would not do, for Yul-han was in danger, too, now that he had married a Christian. He bore the burden of his secret alone and continued so to do.

… Summer passed again, and Yul-han had nearly finished his house, the maid Ippun working like any man carrying rock and mixing cement and digging the ground under the ondul floor. Once more the time had come for school to open and Yul-han must return to his teaching. This year Induk was not to teach. She had conceived and Yul-han wished her to remain at home, and home now was this small new house. He would go alone to the city for his teaching days, and return here for holidays, and she could stay with Ippun, near his parents but independent There remained only to tell the news to his parents, the expectation of a grandson for them, the plan that Induk would remain near them with Ippun. But above all, he must tell them that he had decided to become a Christian, that he was to be baptized, and that he had accepted the headship of the Christian school in the city. This was the one demand that Induk had made of him when he told her that he wished to be Christian.

“I beg you then to leave the Japanese school and stay with the Christians. Among them you will be safe: but alone, one Christian among the Japanese, you will be searched and examined and questioned and watched, wherever you are.”

She had already inquired of the missionary, who gladly had offered Yul-han the headship of the school since the present head had a consumption in his lungs and should rest in bed for many months. Yul-han therefore sent his resignation by letter to the Japanese school and when he was called to the office of the Bureau of Education, he gave the true reason for his change of work

The chief of this bureau was a young man, once an assistant professor in the University at Tokyo, and he had come because the salary here was three times what he had received there and since he had his old parents to support he had not been able to refuse. Now he sat behind a high western desk in an office barren of decoration, but with western chairs and a desk. He wore civilian clothes, western in style, and his hair was cut short and he had gold spectacles with thick lenses. He was courteous when Yul-han came in and invited him to be seated. Then he opened a document which lay on the desk.

“I note,” he said, “that you have resigned your post at the city middle school. Have you a complaint?”

“I have no complaint,” Yul-han replied. He hesitated and then said, with a slight smile on his round good-natured face, “I have changed my work because I am about to change myself. I have decided to be a Christian.”

The young man continued to study the document. “You have been baptized?” he inquired.

“No,” Yul-han said, “but I shall be baptized on the first day of next month.”

“By immersion or sprinkling?” the young Japanese asked, still not lifting his eyes.

Yul-han was surprised. “Does it make a difference?”

“There is a difference,” the young man said.

Yul-han summoned his courage and asked a question for himself. “Can it be, sir, that you also are Christian?”

“I attended a Christian school before I went to the university,” the young man said. “You understand—” Here he pushed the documents aside and lifted his head to look at Yul-han. “You understand that we are not opposed to Christianity, in principle. It is only when rebels hide among the Christians that we must be severe.”

“I understand,” Yul-han said quietly.

“You appear to be a sensible man,” the Japanese said. “Therefore I will allow you to transfer your post.” He drew the papers toward him again and with his fountain pen wrote something quickly on the top. “Of course,” he continued as he folded the papers and fitted them into the envelope, “I shall count on you to let me know whether you discover rebels among the Christians. You may report to me in secret and safely.”

Yul-han heard this and debated with himself as to what he should answer. He decided to answer nothing, for though he had not attended the trials, he knew that Christians had suffered the heaviest judgments. He put out his hand and took the envelope and bowing, he went away.

On the next Sunday he was baptized. The day was cloudy and cold, the winds of late autumn blew leaves from the trees and wrenched persimmons from their stalks. Children in ragged garments ran to save the fruit and stood under dripping eaves sucking the sweet juice and shivering in the chilly air. The reek of fresh kimchee hung like an atmosphere over city and country.

Yul-han walked through the streets to the church, Induk following decorously behind. He saw everything with new intensity this morning, as though his entire being were alive and aware as it had never been, as though he were separating himself from all that had gone before, all that now was. The dusty street, the sad-faced people, the children merry in spite of cold and poverty and even in spite of the ubiquitous police ready to rebuke them whatever they did, and behind the crowded busy city the mountains soaring into a darker gray against the gray sky, barren and beautiful — all this pressed upon his mind and heart. As he entered the church, he knew that he would come out of that door a different man for he was taking his place today among those who were separate. No longer would he be only a Korean. He would be a Korean Christian and which would be the greater part of him, Korean or Christian, he did not know, or perhaps there would not be two parts in him, but one whole, a Korean permeated with the new religion.

He did not wish to speak and in silence he went to the men’s side and Induk went to the women’s side. Among the men he sat, a stranger to himself. He was giving himself away to a God he had not seen and yet he felt a dedication he had never known. The ceremony was beginning now and as usual with music. A man played upon a small western organ, and he played well. Yul-han loved music as all his people did, and he was easily moved by it, as they all were. Music was woven into the texture of their souls and some of the attraction for them in the new religion was the part that music had in worship, the grave organ music and the communal singing. Already Yul-han knew the hymns they sang and he recognized the one the man was playing—“Just as I am, without one plea, but that Thy blood was shed for me, Oh Lamb of God, I come to Thee—” Mystic words, symbolizing what he was about to do!

The missionary came into the church from the vestry and above his long black robes, his upstanding red hair flamed like a burning crown upon his head. He prayed silently before the gold cross under the window. Prayer — that Yul-han had not yet achieved. He had made tentative efforts when he was alone to come into this communication, but he had not found the way. No one answered.

“Do not expect to hear a voice,” the missionary had told him when he inquired as to whether he had prayed properly. “Simply cultivate the habit of prayer and after a while you will find answer in the content it brings to your heart and the direction it brings to your mind. Wait upon the Lord.”

“These are also the instructions of the Lord Buddha,” Yul-han had said, remembering what his father had told him of the monks in the monasteries of the Diamond Mountains.

To his surprise the missionary had shown anger and he made retort.

“It is not at all the same. There is only one God and he is not Buddha. He is Jehovah.”

Yul-han had considered reply, for did it matter, if it was true that there was only one Being, whether his name was Buddha or Jehovah? But he was peaceable by nature and he kept question and answer to himself.

The missionary turned now to the people. The church was crowded and men stood leaning against the walls. Women sat close together, many of them with children in their arms. Why were they here except to seek comfort and encouragement in their sorry lives? The missionary looked at them and his rugged face took on a rugged tenderness.

“Let us sing,” he said. “Let us praise the Lord.”

The church was filled with the music of human voices. His people could sing, Yul-han knew, and he listened to the mighty chorus. Tears suddenly filled his eyes. These men and women, these poverty-stricken, oppressed people of his, singing! With all their hearts they were singing, in harmony, in rhythm, born singers and lovers of song, singing like children in the dark and to the unknown God. Out of his heart spontaneously a cry rose to his lips.

“Oh God, whatever your name, help me to help my people, for I love them—”

He heard no voice, but words sprang clearly into his mind, “For God so loved the world—”

Immediately he too began to sing, his powerful voice leading the melody. Well-being surged through mind and body as he sang through the hymn. The missionary spoke in his usual simple Korean, struggling to convey great thoughts through imperfect language and the people listened, rapt, the intense silence broken only by the occasional cry of a restless child. What was this sense of health and calm in himself? For the first time Yul-han was sure that he had decided rightly in becoming a Christian. He was not sure what it meant in entirety but he believed now that he could learn and grow. He was humble as he had never been before. There were many poor people in the church, those who were ignorant and who were not yangban. At first he had been reluctant to think that he must mingle with these people and call them his brothers, he who was born of a proud and ancient clan. Now he was cleansed of that pride. It did not exist in him, swept away in a moment and by what means he did not know, except that it was not there. He belonged here, and these were truly his brethren.

The hour passed and he heard the missionary ask those who were to be baptized to come forward and, half dazed, he stumbled to his feet and went forward with a dozen others, men and women. He bowed his head as the missionary prayed and his heart beat fast. This was the moment that committed him wholly to the unknown future.

“You may suffer persecution,” the missionary was saying. “You may be called upon to die even as Christ died on the cross.”

Yes, it was true. There had been such crucifixions by the Japanese gendarmes. In a village in the north three Christians had been crucified.

“I baptize you,” the missionary was saying, “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.”

He felt a trickle of cold water on his bare head. It ran down his cheeks and fell on his coat but he did not wipe it away.

“And Jesus took bread and blessed it and brake it and gave it to the disciples and said, ‘Take, eat, this is my body—’

“And he took the cup and gave thanks and gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink ye all of it—’”

The deep voice of the missionary intoned the words and Yul-han felt the unleavened bread dry upon his tongue and he tasted the sharp acid of the red wine. It was done. By a strange mystic ceremony, he was born again into a Christian, as surely as long ago he had been born into the family of Kim.

Yul-han had stayed away from the trials of the conspirators against the Governor-General’s life, and this at the beseeching of Induk. He had yielded to her not for his own sake, but because she insisted that her parents and brothers and sisters would also be in danger if by any chance he were seen there as a Christian. This wife of his, so brave where a good deed was to be done, could be as frightened as a child of police or soldiers or any official person. She shrank at the sight of a gun, and would walk far out of her way to avoid any man in uniform. Nevertheless Yul-han read of the trials assiduously each day in the newspapers and on the walls, for on the walls there was more than news. In spite of watchful police, always during the night some rebel would steal to the wall and in the darkness he would scrawl secret messages. If Yul-han went early, he could read before the police washed the words away. Thus he learned how the trials went and how all prisoners made the same confession of guilt one day and denied it the next, saying that they had been forced to give false testimony under torture. On the day after his Christian ceremony he read of the man now called the Living Reed.

“Beware — beware the Living Reed!” the secret message proclaimed.

In the newspapers under the eyes of the rulers, he read too the full account of what had taken place at the trials on the twelfth day. On that day, the newsmen reported, Baron Yun, a Korean of high yangban family, confessed before the Japanese judge that he was indeed the head of the New Peoples Society.

Now Yul-han knew this aged noble man very well, for Baron Yun had been a friend of his father’s, and the two had often drunk tea together in the best teahouses of the capital. Yul-han himself could remember such times, when his father had taken him, a boy of twelve or so, to the teashops to meet gentlemen scholars. He remembered Baron Yun especially, for he was such a man that his father would not sit in his presence until Baron Yun insisted upon it. The Baron was a slight man, his face always pale, and he moved and spoke with serene dignity wherever he was. Now in his old age he was on trial for his life. He made his defense in fluent Japanese, for he had studied Japanese in Japan in his youth, Chinese in Shanghai and English in America. He had traveled also to Russia, and upon his return to his own country he had held many high posts, especially as Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs during the Russo-Japanese war. When the invaders entered his country he became a Christian, and was deposed by the newcomers and thereafter took a post in a Christian school.

It was morning when Yul-han read the story of the trial. He sat at his breakfast table alone, as head of the house. Question by the Court, answer by Baron Yun, he read on, forgetting that he had classes at the school.

“What were your feelings when you were compelled to retire from the Foreign Service?”

“I was overwhelmed with grief.”

“Are you not the head of the New Peoples Society?”

“I am, but I told the members that I would not perform violent acts.”

“Yet you must have been indignant at the annexation of your country.”

“I would never have found myself in this court if I had possessed the power at that time to prevent Japan from becoming lord over my country.”

“Would it not be reasonable, nevertheless, for you to have formed a plan to change the situation?”

“I was rather too old to do more than I did, but it is true that I felt bitterly indignant at the position of my country.”

Yul-han, reading these brave words, could see before his eyes the gallant old gentleman in his white Korean robes, his long white beard streaming over his breast, his staff in his hand, his wrinkled face, his steadfast dark eyes. The warmth of fresh courage, fresh hope, new faith, reached Yul-han’s heart. If young and old among his people could be so fearless, should he be afraid?

Induk came to the door at this moment. “Do you forget that you must go to your class?”

“I do not forget,” Yul-han said, “but I have another duty. First I must go to my father.”

Induk’s hands flew to her cheeks. “What is wrong? Has something happened?”

“Baron Yun was tried yesterday,” Yul-han said. “He is in prison and he is my father’s old friend. I must tell him — and I must tell him that I am Christian now. I trust it is not too much for one day.”

… He found his father watering a young apple tree in the east garden. His mother held a hoe with which she loosened the earth so that the roots could drink.

“You two, my parents,” Yul-han said when he had given greeting. “Do you expect to get fruit from this little tree?”

“You will get it,” Il-han said, “you and your children. And I am glad you have come. I have a matter to discuss with you.”

He put down the watering pot and led the way into the house and to his accustomed place. Then he waited, as though he did not know how to begin.

“Speak, Father,” Yul-han said, when they had sat down.

“You speak first,” Il-han directed. “What I have to say may have some connection with you.”

Yul-han took a breath. “Father,” he said. “I have become a Christian.”

Rain had begun to fall, a slow autumnal rain. It dripped from the eaves and trickled in rills over the stones of the footpath in the garden. Sunia was running toward the kitchen, her apron over her head. Meanwhile Yul-han waited for his father’s anger and with such foreboding that he was almost frightened when he heard his father’s voice come not angrily but with unusual mildness.

“Had you told me this a short time ago, I would have reproached you for bringing our family into danger. But I have seen such sights and heard such words—”

And he told of the trials of the Christians, of their wit and courage. Each one he described, young and old, until Yul-han interrupted.

“Add to the noble list one more name, Father,” he said. “Add the name of Baron Yun.”

Il-han’s jaw hung ajar. “Not my old friend!”

“Even he.”

Il-han hesitated, inquiring of himself whether he should not tell Yul-han of his older brother.

“That man they call the Living Reed,” Yul-han said, as though he read his father’s mind.”

Il-han did not move or lift his eyes. “What of him?”

“Do any guess who he is?”

“Do you?”

“I was not there. I did not see his face.”

Ah, Yul-han did not know! Let him remain unknowing and safe.

“Why should I know when you do not?” Il-han said. “And for the rest,” he added with pretended impatience, “if you wish to be Christian, then be one.”

This was all that was left of his anger against his second son.

The winter of that year passed in dire deep cold. Cold was to be expected but this cold was the chill of death. Each morning the gendarmes collected the bodies of those who had frozen during the night, men, women, and children, and threw them into trucks and carried them away. The earth was too solid to bury them and they were stored in empty barracks or piled and covered with mats until the spring came. Nor were those who lived better off, for a long drought in the autumn had dried the mountain slopes, the grass was scanty and the rulers would not allow trees to be cut. The mountains, they said, must be covered with trees again as they had been in past centuries, and if a man were caught cutting a tree in the night he was flogged and put in jail. In every house the ondul floors were cold, except for the two brief times, morning and afternoon, when food must be cooked, and since in the past the people had depended upon warm floors upon which they could spread their mattresses and therefore needed no heavy quilts, they were cold as they had never been before.

The long winter passed into a scanty spring and the time drew near for Induk to give birth to the child, and her mother begged Yul-han to allow her to come to her family home for this event. Yul-han did not know how to reply. If he refused Induk’s mother, that one would be wounded. If he agreed, then Sunia would be displeased. Indeed she was already displeased, for somehow she had wind of the request, and she laid hold of Yul-han one day when he was on his way to school.

“What!” Sunia exclaimed. “I suppose you think I cannot help my grandchild to be born? I suppose only a Christian will serve?”

“Mother, I pray you,” Yul-han exclaimed. “Is it a matter for me to decide? Let it be as Induk wishes.”

This Induk heard from an open window and she came hurrying out.

“Good Mother,” she said, coaxing Sunia. “The birth is not so important as the hundred-day feast. Will you let us celebrate the feast with you and the grandfather?”

Sunia, having made protest, was willing to be mollified, and so it was decided. On a stormy night in early spring, Induk went into labor, her mother and her sisters about her. Outside in the main room Yul-han awaited the birth with eagerness and also with mild amusement for Induk had said she wished the first child to be a girl.

“I am praying God for a daughter,” she told Yul-han one night as they lay side by side in bed in married talk.

He gave a shout of laughter.

“Now here is confusion,” he exclaimed. “I am praying for a son!”

Induk did not know what to say. At first she was inclined to be somewhat peevish. Then she thought better of it and smiled.

“Let us both stop praying and accept what God sends,” she said.

The birth was not easy for Induk. The hours were many and Yul-han was about to be fearful when, as the early sun climbed over the eastern mountain, his mother-in-law came to the door and beckoned him with her forefinger. He went to her at once and she gave him a sly look, for Induk had told her of their conflicting prayers.

“You have prevailed,” she said. “God has given you a son.”

He went to Induk then and knelt on the floor beside her bed. There, resting on her arm, he saw a sturdy child whose eyes were already open. It was his son! He felt a strange new pride in himself, a conviction of achievement, an upsurge of life and hope. Then he looked at Induk.

“Next time, since I am so strong in prayer, I shall pray for you a daughter,” he said, and weary as she was, she laughed.

… At first Yul-han thought of the child only as his son, a part of himself, a third with Induk. As time passed, however, a most strange prescience took hold of his mind and spirit. Babe though he was, he perceived that the child possessed an old soul. It was not to be put into words, this meaning of an old soul. Yul-han, observing the child, saw in his behavior a reasonableness, a patience, a comprehension, that was totally unchildlike. He did not scream when his food was delayed, as other infants do. Instead, his eyes calm and contemplative, he seemed to understand and was able to wait. These eyes, quietly alive, moved from Yul-han’s face to Induk’s when they talked, as though he knew what his parents said. He was a large child, strong and healthy, and he had presence. Yul-han, watching, felt a certain awe, a hesitancy in calling him “my son,” as though the claim were presumption.

“If I were Buddhist,” he told Induk one day, “I would say that this child is an incarnation of some former great soul.”

They were together of an evening, and Induk was preparing for the child’s hundredth day after birth, which was to be celebrated the next day. She was baking small cakes and while they were in the oven, she arranged upon a low table the objects for the child’s choosing tomorrow. According to tradition whatever the child chose was a prophecy of his future.

She paused when Yul-han spoke. “I feel it, too,” she replied quietly. “What it means I cannot say. I only know that this child will lead and we must follow. We must not try to shape him, though we are his parents. He will know what he is, and we must wait until he tells us.”

She came to Yul-han’s side then, and they knelt together before the child, who lay on a pillow on the ondul floor. He had been moving his hands as babies do, kicking his feet and making soft burbles as he discovered his voice. Now he turned his head to look at his parents, and he gazed at them with such intelligence, such awareness, that it was as if he spoke their names, not as his parents, but as persons whom he recognized.

“Oh, what is this—” Induk murmured in amazement.

The child smiled as though with inner joy.

… “Let no one speak,” Il-han said.

They were gathered together for this celebration, the two families, Yul-han’s and Induk’s, in Il-han’s house. For the first time Il-han and Sunia met with Christians, a meeting not possible if Il-han had not seen with his own eyes the steadfast courage of the Christians at the trials. Today, therefore, he greeted Induk’s parents with courtesy and they sat in the seats of honor, the father in his white robes, and the mother, short and plain of face, in her best gray satin skirt and bodice. On the outskirts in lower seats were Induk’s sisters and young brother, and Sunia’s sisters, a family crowd such as there had not been since the funeral of Il-han’s father.

All were intent upon the child. He, too, was in his new garments of red silk that Induk had made for the occasion. He was propped against a cushion, and he lay in calm content, smiling when he was spoken to.

“Let no one speak,” Il-han said again.

All voices were hushed then, as they watched the child. Upon the floor around him Induk had placed the usual objects, a brush for writing, a small dagger, a piece of money, a bundle of thread. The child looked at Induk inquiringly, and she nodded and smiled. Then as though he understood what he must do, the child examined the objects carefully and after a moment he put out his right hand and chose the bundle of thread. All burst into joyful cries and exclamations. The child had chosen the symbol for long life.

Thereafter they ate the cakes which Induk had prepared and drank tea and made talk happily. And when this was done, they presented their gifts to the child. Some gave garments of gaily colored silks, some gave money, and some bowls heaped with rice to signify wealth. The grandparents gave the essential gifts of bundles of thread, a rice bowl of fine lacquer with a cover of polished brass, a set of silver chopsticks and spoon. Each gift the child received with such calm and seeming comprehension that all guests went away awed.

When they were gone Sunia took the child in her arms. “I am glad he chose the thread,” she told Yul-han. “Else I might have my fears. He is too wise, this child.”

“Wisdom is what we need in times like this,” he told her.

“I raise a name for him,” Il-han said. “I raise a Chinese name. Let him be called Liang. Later he may add another name of his own choosing, but let us call him Liang, which means Light — the light of day, the light of enlightenment.”

They considered, looking at each other and at the child.

“It is a good name,” Yul-han said.

Sunia nodded. “A name big enough for him to grow in.”

But Induk snatched the child away from her. “He is only a baby,” she cried. “He is only a little baby. You make him too soon a man!” And she hugged him to her breast.

Beyond the despair in Yul-han’s own country, a turmoil appeared in the West. Out of the West, so long committed to peace, a war arose. At first no one could understand such a war, beginning, it seemed, in the single assassination of a nobleman in a country whose name the people here did not know. Suddenly like fire upon mountain grass, the single death was spread into multitudes. Europe was divided by war, and Germany, the nation most admired by Japan and where many Japanese had been sent by their Emperor for education in soldiery, Germany was the first to move to battle. By command of their ruler, a proud man with a withered arm, the German army moved swiftly across the nations.

“What is to happen to us?” Induk asked, in fear.

“We are helpless,” Yul-han replied.

“But which side will these who rule us take in this war?”

“They will take what profits them best,” Yul-han replied.

He longed to stay and comfort her, but the day’s work waited and he went to it as he did on all days. Yet in his classes he could scarcely compel the usual tasks. His pupils were restless, afraid, excited, guessing and wondering how the new war would change their lives and hopeful that in the turmoil their country could find its independence again.

“Have no hope,” Yul-han told them.

“How can a Christian say we are to have no hope?” a young man demanded.

Yul-han could not answer. He felt himself rebuked. “Attend to your books,” he said sternly.

But the young could not attend to their books. They were distracted and rebellious and they broke rules and reproached their teachers. When Japan declared herself against Germany many were surprised, but Yul-han understood what the declaration meant. Korea was only the stepping-stone toward all Asia for that small strong island nation. Germany had taken territories from China, and Japan would claim them as booty of war.

One Sunday after the ceremony of worship in the church, Yul-han told Induk to wait for him under a date tree in the churchyard where were the tombs of Christians, for he had need of special counsel from the missionary. He went into the vestry behind the pulpit and there the missionary was taking off his robes of office. The day was cool with another autumn but this ruddy saint was always hot whatever the season and as he took off his black robes the sweat ran down his cheeks into his beard, now laced with white hairs.

“Brother, come in,” he shouted when he saw Yul-han. “How nave you been?”

Yul-han came in, pale and quiet and courteous. “I have need of counsel,” he said after greeting, and he went on to tell the American his fears.

“No one is deceived,” he told the missionary. “The Japanese will not fight in Europe, but they will take the territories of the Germans in China and there they will put down the roots of coming empire. Even as they came here to our earth with the pretext of war — ah, all their talk was only how they needed a place for their soldiers to encamp in the war against China and then against Russia, not against us, ah never, never against us! Will your President Wilson understand what Japan is doing?”

“Trust God,” the missionary said.

“Does God know?” Yul-han retorted with a crooked smile.

“He knows all things and all men,” the missionary replied.

Yul-han left the vestry room with questions unanswered. He longed for a man with whom he could talk and argue and by whom he could be enlightened, and in this mood he sought his old friend and associate teacher in his old school, Yi Sung-man. They had not met since he left the Japanese school, and he had no wish to return to that place. But he remembered that he and Sung-man used often to take their noon meal at a small cheap restaurant in a narrow side street and there he went the next day about noon. Yes, there Sung-man sat, untidy as usual and gulping down noodles and soup from a steaming bowl. His hair was too long and his western suit was unpressed and not clean. Yul-han sat down at the same table, and Sung-man looked up.

“You!” he exclaimed. “How long since I have seen you? You are thinner. I hear you have made a Christian out of yourself. I have been thinking I might do the same thing — but no, I would lose my job. You are lucky. Soup — soup—”

He snapped his fingers for the old woman who served, and she brought Yul-han a small burning brazier on which stood the brass bowl of hot soup.

More talk passed between them, small talk, questions of this old friend and that, while the restaurant grew empty.

“Have you a class?” Yul-han inquired then.

Sung-man shook his head and tipped his bowl to empty the last of the soup into his wide mouth. He set the bowl down, wiped his greasy mouth on his sleeve and folded his arms and leaned forward.

“Do you know the American Woodrow Wilson?” Yul-han asked next in a low voice.

“Who does not?” Sung-man replied. “He is our one hope, a man of peace, alone in the world, who has power. He will save us all, if he can stop the war.”

“Have you a book about Wilson?” Yul-han asked next.

“Come to my room,” Sung-man replied.

Yul-han went with him then to his bedroom in the school building and Sung-man gave him a small thick book, printed on cheap paper. The title was one word, Wilson.

“Read it,” Sung-man said, “but always in secret. Then become one of us.”

One of us? Yul-han would not ask the meaning of such words. He put the book in his sleeve and went home and read the book all night. Out of dim blotted words he began to see, face to face, the figure of a man, a lonely, brave man, a man too sure of himself at times, but a man who tried always to do right. Could there be such a man anywhere in the world in these times? There was this one.

… Under his grass roof Il-han, too, was learning of Wilson. The sheets thrust under his door had continued, stopping sometimes as though the one who put them there might be in prison or killed, but before many days they were always there again. Now they told of Woodrow Wilson, Woodrow Wilson and the war, Woodrow Wilson and his own people, Woodrow Wilson and the subject peoples of the world.

Il-han read these pages again and again, pondering their meaning. His memories of America, once so clear and warm, had cooled when he conceived a deep contempt for that Roosevelt who had understood nothing of the significance of Korea in the world. Korea, this country, this gem of rock and earth, its mountains rich in mineral treasure, its rivers running gold, this flame of human fire thrusting itself even into the sea, surely it was one of the treasure countries of the globe. There were a few such places which, because of their strategic position, became the centers of human whirlpools, small in themselves but each an axis about which other nations revolved. Theodore Roosevelt could not comprehend the importance of such a country and in ignorance, admiring the courage of a small Japan over a vast Russia, he had ignored the very means by which Japan had won the victory, which was Korea. Was this Woodrow Wilson a wiser man?

Slowly, pondering every line, gazing at a dim photograph, Il-han created for himself the man Wilson. He was a scholar and this went to Il-han’s heart and to his mind. Scholars could understand one another everywhere in the world. Roosevelt had been only a rider of horses, a hunter of wild animals, a lover of violence. Even Sunia had exclaimed when, his office over, he had left his home to hunt savage beasts in Africa.

“Poor wife of his,” Sunia had said. “After seeing nothing of him during the years of his office, she must lose him altogether to the wild animals! You, at least, when the Queen was dead, retired here to our grass roof. In this way my true life began.”

He had dismissed this as woman talk when he heard it, but her words came back to him now. And Wilson was more than a scholar. He was also a man of deep feeling for his wife and children, the head of his house as well as of his nation. Did not Confucius say that a man’s responsibility was first to his own house? In many ways Woodrow Wilson was Confucian and could therefore be understood. He was a man of ideals and conviction, a man of peace. This Il-han concluded for on one sheet the writer had taken pains to put down certain sayings from Wilson. Thus when Wilson decreed a day of prayer for peace, in the midst of war, he had declared:

“I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America, do designate Sunday, the fourth day of October next, a day of prayer and supplication, and do request all God-fearing persons to repair on that day to their places of worship, there to unite their petitions to Almighty God that He vouchsafe His children healing peace and restore once more concord among men and nations.”

And again: “The example of America must be a special example. It must be the example not merely of peace because it will not fight but of peace because peace is the healing and elevating influence of the world and strife is not. There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right. There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight.”

Beneath these remarkable words Il-han drew a line with his inked brush. He did not understand them fully and he pondered them in the night. What man was this who could speak words so strong that they became weapons for peace? Sword-sharp, bold and clear, the words struck into his own heart, accustomed to the love of peace, and into his mind, trained by the classic discipline of Confucius that the superior man leads not by violence or by coarse physical acts but by the pure intelligence of a wise mind.

From such meditation Il-han slowly created the image of a man ruling a great western country with calm conviction and high righteousness, maintaining peace in a world of war and evil. He began at first to trust this American, and then to idolize him.

Yul-han’s second child, a daughter, was born in the early spring before the sun had warmed the earth, when the first plum blossoms appeared on the bare branches of the plum tree, a time which should have been a happy one, with ceremony to be observed. Alas, it was also the time when the great American Woodrow Wilson had after all taken his country into the war, in the fourth month of the solar year 1917. The Japanese rulers had forbidden the use of the lunar year, saying that none cared what year it was in Korean history and from thenceforth all must use the solar year, which was the modern system of counting time. The year therefore was 1917.

The newspapers during these times had printed much of what Wilson said, and as people read his words all Koreans had grown to think of him as saint and savior and a man who would never descend to making war. For months Yul-han, too, had read everything he could find that the Americans said, and he met often with his father to consult on the meaning of what was said, and whether the Americans in the end must fight. For slowly and against his first confidence and his own inclination, Il-han had come to believe that though peace was the proper way of life, it might now be necessary for the Americans to enter the war, lest far away in Europe a center of tyranny, conceived in the mind of an angry man, a man born with a withered arm and a slight body often ill, could light a fire that in some future time, joined with other minds, even such as ruled now and here in Korea, would put the whole world into darkness.

Il-han believed but Yul-han could not believe the necessity. “Father,” he exclaimed, “how can Wilson persuade his people to war when all his persuasion has been for peace?”

Il-han shook his head and stroked his graying beard. “Do you not observe that these Germans mistake his words of peace for words of fear? What is their answer? While Wilson speaks of peace they declare that they will fight an unrestricted war by sea. Is this to be endured?”

Yul-han looked at his father curiously. “Why is it that you, sitting here under this quiet grass roof, are concerned at what happens halfway around the world?”

“I have learned that no grass roof can hide me or any of us,” Il-han replied. “We are not like the crabs of the sea. We have no shell into which we can creep. Our ancestors spent themselves and grew frantic and quarrelsome seeking for such a shell. All in vain! The enemy sought us and found us, and we are without shelter or hope unless we become part of the world, as indeed we are, though unknowing, for it is only in the safety of a safe world that we can be safe. Who can rid us of these alien rulers? Not we, not our friends, not even their enemies. We have no hope from any except from all. This Woodrow Wilson is the one man who understands that this is true for his country, too, and in his shadow we must follow. When the war is won, he will prevail, and we shall be given our independence and under his leadership we shall have the freedom we long for and have never had, for all will be free.”

His father spoke like a prophet, and like a prophet he looked, the old prophets of another age, of whom Yul-han read in his Christian books. He was silent and reverent before his father. Yet his father and himself were not the only ones. All over the country, in city and village, people gathered to hear someone who could read to them of Wilson, and all looked to that man as their hope and their savior. There was not one voice under heaven except his voice which spoke such words. Others spoke of their own countries but this man spoke of all nations, and they believed in him. Everywhere the people crowded into Christian churches with hope and eagerness, believing that the God to whom Wilson prayed would make him victorious and with his victory would come their freedom again. Indeed, because of Wilson’s faith they joined the churches and many thousands became Christian for his sake.

Wilson declared that on the sixteenth day of the fifth month he would speak to his own people, and by now, such was his strength, when he spoke to his own, in reality he spoke to all peoples. Even before this day could arrive, however, the arrogant enemy in Europe sank three great American ships.

Yul-han hastened to his father’s house when the news of the ships was told. Il-han was in triumph. His eyes, still black and lively, were bright with excitement.

“Now,” he told Yul-han, his left hand slapping the newspaper he held in his right, “now Wilson must lead his people to war.”

“Father!” Yul-han exclaimed. “I cannot believe you are a man of peace! Or have you been drinking?”

“I have not been drinking,” Il-han retorted. “Hear this!”

He laid hold of Yul-han’s arm and held him while he read aloud the words that Wilson had spoken, breaking in with his own exclamations of approval.

“He speaks to the German people, this man — he begs them to turn against their own tyrants. It is as if he spoke to us — to our people. He says — he says—” Here Il-han stopped to find the place with his forefinger. “He says, ‘We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling towards them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not their impulse that their government entered this war. This war was provoked and waged in the interest of dynasties accustomed to use their fellow men as pawns and tools—’” Here Il-han paused to inquire of his son, “Is that not our people? Are we not being used as pawns and tools? He is speaking to us, I tell you — no, wait, there is more — he says — here, he tells the German people, ‘We seek no indemnities, no material compensation, we desire no conquests — no dominion. We have no selfish ends to serve.’ Is there another man like this one under heaven? No, I swear there is not — And then he goes on, he says, ‘There must be a League of Nations, to which all nations should belong, and before which all nations may present their injustices.’ There is where you must go, my son! I will go with you. When the war is won we will go to the League of Nations. We will present our cause.”

Yul-han was alarmed. He had tried several times to stop the flood of his father’s talk and could not. Tears were streaming down Il-han’s cheeks, he was trembling, his lips quivered, he was half laughing, half weeping.

“Father, remember the war is far from won. The Germans are in the place of power. It is the last hope that the Americans are now in it too. We do not know—”

“I do know!” Il-han shouted. “I know that this man will win the war for us! When I read his words, I feel my own heart ready to burst. I grow strong again, I am young, I can go to battle myself!”

“I grant that his words are strong and skilled, Father, but words do not win a war.”

Il-han was like a child, disappointed. “You are cold,” he said passionately. “You are very cold. If Woodrow Wilson is not enough for you, then where is your God, this new Christian God? Is he not Wilson’s God also?”

His father had cut him to the heart “Yes,” he said. “He is the same God.”

He turned then and left his father’s house. This was how it was on that day, and when he came to his own house Ippun met him at the gate. Her round frostbitten face was bright.

“Master,” she said, “you have a girl in your house, your daughter.”

Yes, Induk had become pregnant again, though neither of them had rejoiced. The times were too hard for children, and it was enough to have Liang, their son. He grew big for his age, a large child, benign, composed and yet radiant. He walked at eight months and talked before he was a year old. Yul-han too often forgot how young he was and spoke to him and considered him as a person. The child loved his father and was happy in his presence, yet when he was away he amused himself easily with whatever he found.

Above all, however, the child loved his grandfather, and Il-han found such comfort in this as he had not expected to find again in his lifetime.

“Liang, my grandson,” he told Yul-han, “repays us for every loss I have suffered.” And again he said, his voice solemn, “Liang, my grandson, must never be punished. Whatever he does is with good purpose and with understanding too deep for us.”

It was only natural, then, that Yul-han and Induk felt it enough to have one such child. Often, indeed, they doubted whether they knew how to be good parents, wise enough, learned enough, for Liang as he grew to manhood. Again and again Yul-han had been unwilling to think of another child to be born, even while he saw Induk’s body swelling as months passed.

Nor did this unwillingness change now as he looked down into the small wrinkled face of his newborn daughter. In silence he knelt beside the bed upon which Induk lay. She looked at him with her delicate air of sadness and pleading, her narrow high-cheeked face as pale as ivory and her eyes long and dark. She had a tender mouth and a high smooth forehead, the combination just this side of beauty.

“Why have we dared to have this child and a girl, too?” Her voice was sorrowful and low.

He knew what she meant. In times like this, in the midst of hunger and gloom and lost freedom, how could they protect a daughter? He had felt his own heritage was unhappy enough, a country beset with quarrels and divisions and threatened war, but at least the country had still belonged to his people. Now they were no better than serfs, and the only ones who were not serfs were traitors who had sold themselves to the invaders. Only the Christians had solidarity in their hope that some day God, in whom they placed their single trust, would deliver them out of the hand of the enemy.

“We must make her childhood as happy as we can,” he said at last. “Let us at least give her something to remember.”

Induk did not reply and taking her long narrow hand, work-worn as it was, and warming it between his own hands, he noticed for the first time how different their hands were, his strong and square, but well shaped as were the hands of his people. Then he laid her hand gently on the coverlet and took the tiny clenched fist of his daughter into his palm. “Perhaps when she is a woman the world will be better and our country free,” he said. “Let us hope, for without hope we die.”

Spring passed into summer. Across the eastern seas all knew that young Americans were being called from their homes to become soldiers. The Japanese morning paper reprinted the notice:

ATTENTION

Register Tuesday, June 5th

On Tuesday June 5th every male between the ages of 21 years and 31 years, whether a citizen of the United States or not, must register at the nearest voting place in his ward. Registration does not mean liability to military service unless you are a citizen of the United States or have taken out first citizen papers.

The American President himself issued a proclamation which was also reprinted in the Japanese papers:

CALL TO ARMS

Now therefore I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, do proclaim and give notice to all — and I do charge that every male person of the designated ages is written on these lists of honor—

The great sonorous words rolled across the world and announced to the serfs and the slaves and to all who were not free, and to Yul-han himself, that those male persons whose names were to be written on the lists of honor would deliver not only his own people from the danger of invaders, but those who had been and were invaded.

In the church the missionary raised his hairy arms to heaven and asked God’s blessing on America and on the American President and from the thousands of the suppliant congregation of Koreans there came forth like thunder after lightning a great Amen.

… They were meeting in the church at night. In the night, when the lamps of the city were put out and the rulers slept, the Christians stole to the church and sitting in the darkness, listened to Yul-han who read aloud beside a single candle, hidden by a wooden shelter. What he read was news of the war halfway across the world. Japan had seized territories in China; yes, ships were sinking to the bottom of the sea; yes, young men were dying by the thousands, and then by the millions. Britain alone had five million young men dead; yes, but Woodrow Wilson was speaking again to the peoples of the world and the Christians crowding the churches in Korea listened:

“‘The military-masters of Germany who proved also to be the masters of Austria-Hungary, their tool and pawn, have regarded the smaller states as their natural tools and instruments of domination.’”

A long low moan came from the people. “We are also tools and instruments of domination!”

Yul-han read on. “‘Filling the thrones of the Balkan States with German princes, developing sedition and rebellion, their purpose is to make all the Slavic peoples, all the free and ambitious nations of the Baltic peninsula, subject to their will!’”

The people chanted in the same long moan, “We — we are the subjects of others’ will!”

Yul-han lifted his head, his voice rang out, dangerous with hope. “Hear further the words of Woodrow Wilson! ‘We shall hope to secure for the peoples of the Baltic peninsula and for the people of the Turkish Empire the right and the opportunity to make their own lives safe from the dictation of foreign courts!’”

“Make us safe, too, Woodrow Wilson! Make us safe from the dictation of foreign courts,” the people chanted.

All over the world such words were sent by the magic wireless. All that Wilson said was sent, and set in the news of each day’s fighting were the messages of Wilson, put on the air as they were spoken and within twenty-four hours heard everywhere, from the mountains of South America to the mountains of Korea. Three hundred newspapers in the vastness of China received the news and told it to hundreds more in the surrounding countries until the voice of Woodrow Wilson was known everywhere and all that he said was believed.

In the midst of winter, as the war wore on, when snow lay two feet deep in the streets burying the frozen dead under its white cover, Yul-han came home one day from his school. It was evening and his mother was waiting for him.

“Come to your father,” she said, “he is weeping like a child and I cannot stop him, nor will he tell me why he weeps.”

Yul-han went at once across the courtyard and into his father’s library. There he found his elder walking up and down the room, sobbing aloud, and clutching against his bosom a crumpled newspaper. Yul-han caught him by the arms and held him.

“Father, what is it that makes you weep?”

Il-han freed himself, he flung out the newspaper. “See this!” he cried. “Fourteen Points — Wilson’s Fourteen Points—”

He held the folded newspaper, his hands trembling, and then threw it down. “I cannot read it. You read it — no — let me read this one — this third one.” And Il-han read in a loud voice. “‘National aspirations must be respected; people may now be dominated and governed only at their own consent. Self-determination is not a mere phrase; it is an imperative principle of action.’ … My son—” Il-han folded the newspaper small and thrust it in his bosom. He pointed his long forefinger for emphasis. “My son, it is of our people that he speaks! He knows — he knows!”

The tears of the old come as easily as the tears of children, and Yul-han saw that his father wept for relief upon hope long deferred. Underneath his seeming confidence in Woodrow Wilson he had hidden a deep fear that again an American President was not to be trusted. Now he could believe. Self-determination — was it not the same as independence?

“Sit down, Father,” Yul-han said. “Let your heart rest.”

… Il-han was not the only one to be overjoyed. Everywhere the people rejoiced in private, and Christians gave thanks in the churches. On the following Sunday such thanksgiving was made in Yul-han’s church. He went alone that morning, for Induk had stayed at home to tend her younger child who was fretful and often ill. The day was fair, the mountains clear against the deep blue sky, and Yul-han felt a new cheerfulness as he came out of the church. As usual, beggars waited at the steps leading from church to street, for they had learned that Christian hearts were softer on a Sunday than on other days.

Now as Yul-han came to the street, a beggar stepped forward and caught his coat. Without looking at him, Yul-han reached into his pocket and found a coin and dropped it in the beggar’s hand. He went on then and after a few minutes he heard footsteps and turning his head, he saw the beggar again. He waited until the beggar came near to ask why he followed. When the beggar came near, however, he saw the eyes and was silent, wondering. Where had he seen those eyes?

“You do not know me,” the beggar said.

“No,” Yul-han said, and suddenly it occurred to him that this voice he heard was not the beggar-whine he had heard at the church.

“Walk on,” the beggar said. “I will follow, my hand outstretched, as though I were begging.”

Yul-han obeyed, much amazed, and the beggar went on talking, his voice low but strong.

“How many years has it been? I cannot blame you for not knowing me. Yet I am your brother.”

Yul-han turned involuntarily and was about to cry out Yul-chun’s name, when he heard the beggar-whine again—

“A penny, a good deed, master — mercy, good master, to send you on your way to heaven.

“Put money in my hand,” Yul-chun muttered. Again Yul-han obeyed.

“Good master, you have given me a bad coin.”

Yul-han leaned to look at the coin lying in the beggar’s hand and he heard these words: “Leave the gate open tonight — and do not sleep.”

They parted, the beggar effusive in thanks and Yul-han as steady as though his head were not swimming. Yul-chun! Of course it was Yul-chun. He hastened home and told Induk, swallowing his words in his haste and then his eyes fell on his son. The child was listening as though he understood, an impossibility, and yet Yul-han fell silent.

… Somewhere between midnight and dawn, when the night was darkest, Yul-han heard the gate swing slowly open, not more wide than enough to admit the thin body of a man. He stood in the darkness and he put out his hand and felt his brother’s shoulder and he slid his hand to find his brother’s hand. Then stealing in such silence that their feet made no sound, they crossed the garden to the house, and Yul-han led the way to a small inner room, a storeroom with no windows, and where bags of grain stood against the walls. Induk brought floor cushions and a lantern and the two brothers sat and talked in whispers.

“I escaped prison two days ago,” Yul-chun said.

“Prison!” Yul-han exclaimed.

The light from the candle flickered on Yul-chun’s high cheekbones and shadowed the deep-set sockets of his eyes.

“Did you not guess I was in prison?” he asked. “Ever since the trials.”

“The Living Reed!” Yul-han said in sudden comprehension. “You were the Living Reed.”

“And am,” Yul-chun said. He went on to tell his brother hastily what had befallen him since they had last been together.

“But how I escaped — you will not believe it, but a Japanese came to my cell that night I thought myself doomed, and I spoke recklessly of my dream of independence for our people. He listened, said nothing, and went away — and I saw the door of my cell ajar.”

“What was his name?” Yul-han asked.

When Yul-chun spoke it, Yul-han remembered that it was the name of the young chief of the Bureau of Education who had given him permission to become the head of the Christian school, and who himself had once attended a Christian school in Tokyo. Was there not a miracle here, a Christian miracle?

Yul-chun was urging questions again. “How are our parents? Tell me what has happened in our family — but quickly, brother! By dawn I must be far away.”

As quickly as he could Yul-han told him of their parents and of his own marriage and the birth of his children.

A flickering tenderness appeared on Yul-chun’s harsh face. “I would like to see your son,” he said. “Since I am not to have a life like other men, it may be that only your son will carry on the war for our independence.”

At this Induk, still silent, rose and went to the room where Liang lay asleep. She lifted the boy from his bed, and carried him to Yul-chun. The child was barely awake but being amiable and benign by nature, he roused himself and smiled at his uncle at first without much concern. Suddenly, however, an inexplicable change took place. The smile left his face, he leaned forward in his mother’s arms and gazed most earnestly into his uncle’s eyes. He gave a cry of joy, he reached out his arms and leaned out so far that Yul-chun caught him to keep him from falling. The child clung to him, he put his arms about Yul-chun’s neck, he laid his cheek against his cheek, then he lifted his head to gaze at Yul-chun again and laughed aloud, and this he did again and again while Yul-han and Induk stood transfixed in amazement.

“How is this?” Induk cried. “The child knows you! Why, he was never like this, even with us!”

“One would say he recognizes you from some previous life,” Yul-han said, and was troubled, for a strange excitement had taken possession of Liang. He was between laughter and tears, he was struggling to speak and had not enough words, nor could Yul-chun soothe him except by yielding to him and holding him close. This he did for a few moments. Then he gave the child to Induk and he strode from the room.

In the dark garden the two brothers clasped hands and whispered a few last words.

“When shall we meet again?” Yul-han asked.

“Perhaps never,” Yul-chun said. “But perhaps sooner than we dream. I am going back to China!”

“China! Why there?”

“The greatest revolution in man’s history is brewing there. I have much to learn there still — and some day I will come home again to use what I have learned. Have you any money?”

“Yes, I thought you would need it.” Yul-han had prepared a packet of silver coins, all that he had saved, and he gave it now to his brother. They parted then, but Yul-chun suddenly came back the few steps he had taken.

“I do not know why Liang behaved as he did, brother, but this I do know. A great soul came into him somehow when he was born. I am no Buddhist, I have no religion, but I know this is no usual child. Respect him, brother. He has a destiny.”

With these last words, Yul-chun disappeared into the night and Yul-han returned to his house, his heart heavy with concern over what Yul-chun had said. Yet when he came into the room where the beds were spread on the floor, he saw Liang peacefully asleep while Induk, in her nightdress, braided her long hair.

“Is the child himself again?” Yul-han asked.

“Yes,” Induk replied, “except to me he will never be the same again. I know now how Mary, the mother of Jesus, felt. Some day our son will say the same cruel words to me, ‘Woman, what have I to do with thee?’”

“Now, now,” Yul-han said comforting her. “We are overwrought and we communicated our feelings to the child.”

But Induk would not be comforted. “Some dreadful future lies ahead,” she insisted somberly.

“We must not run to meet it,” Yul-han replied and did not dare to tell her what Yul-chun had said.

Yul-han was a man of quiet prudence and persevering patience. Had the times been as they were before the invaders came, he would have lived the life of a scholar and a country gentleman, his tenants farming his land, his children taught by tutors, and his wife a lady who busied herself only in her house. All his instincts were toward peace. It was revolution enough for him to become a Christian, and he was drawn to that religion because it advocated peace between peoples and kindness between persons and this in a time of war and violence and cruelty. Beyond becoming a Christian he might never have gone except for what befell Induk one spring day.

His small daughter was past a year old, a gentle intelligent child of clinging nature. She could not be separated from her mother, so that wherever Induk went the child was with her, grasping her skirt or holding to her forefinger. When Induk sat down to rest in the house or garden the child was in her lap, refusing even her father. For this reason Yul-han scarcely knew his daughter and he drew his son closer. Because of the difference in the two children, the girl demanding her mother and the boy following after the father, a distance had grown between the parents, imperceptible to both except in small ways. Yul-han in the evening withdrew from the fretfulness of his daughter and Induk’s constant preoccupation with her, and he went into his study and his son followed while Induk and the girl sat in the central room. Nor would the girl go to bed without her mother, and Induk must sit beside her until she fell asleep. Then often she herself was weary and went to her bed, too.

Yul-han, drawn to make his son his companion, did so in adult ways. He told the boy his thoughts, he shared his knowledge and together they discussed what happened each day in the nation. The boy spoke of Woodrow Wilson as though the American were his grandfather, and he began passionately to love that distant country which he had never seen. He kept in a box bits of newspapers where he saw pictures of anything American, and he began to visit his grandfather, who once had been to that country.

“Tell me what America is like,” he begged.

So he would coax Il-han and Il-han searched his memories and spoke of kindly people and tall buildings and big farms and great cities, and all that he could remember of America went into the fresh retentive mind of his grandson. And Liang, with that love of truth and goodness natural to those born with wisdom, absorbed into his being these qualities wherever they were to be found and he was enlightened from within.

Easily then did the boy come to believe in the greatness of Woodrow Wilson, and his image of this man as he thought of him was of a great kindly presence, someone like the Christian God of whom he heard from his mother and from the missionary, a being alive in a mist of music and brightness and righteousness and all hope and beneficence. Wilson, so he believed in his poet’s mind, would come one day out of those heavenly clouds and he would make everyone free and happy. He dreamed how he himself would approach Wilson, with flowers in his hand or fruits. He began to save the best of anything he had for Wilson. If in the autumn he saw a persimmon larger than the others, or an orange more golden than others, or an apple more sweet, a pomegranate more red, he would put it aside for Wilson, however tempted he was to eat the fruit himself, until sometimes Induk would find the fruit rotted and then she would throw it away, reproving him for waste. But Liang never told her why he had saved the fruit. It may be that she was inclined to greater impatience with her son because he was his father’s companion, and even, unknown to herself, because he grew so tall and strong for his age, escaping the ills of childhood, thriving on any food, and always quick to learn and understand, and all this in contrast to her sickly daughter. Yet in justice she knew she could not blame the child, for her own indulgence toward the girl was the means of her separation from Yul-han.

She was glad, therefore, when in the autumn once more she became pregnant, for she hoped that a third child would release her from the clinging girl and so mend the division between herself and Yul-han. She was almost three months pregnant when one day she went to the village market to buy fresh fish for the noonday meal while Ippun stayed to wash the family garments at the brook outside the gate, where women gathered for this task. The little girl went with her as she always did, clinging to a fold of her skirt, and slowly they walked to the village. The child grew weary before they reached the end of the road and Induk stooped and let her clamber to her back and she carried her thus until she came near to the market.

There had been some disturbance in the city the day before, but this was so constant that Induk had paid no heed to what Yul-han had told her, which was that some of the students of the Christian school had been arrested a few days before for shouting “Mansei” when the Governor-General had passed by the school gate on his way to his palace. This cry was the cry of old Korea, and hearing it the soldiers in the Governor-General’s bodyguard fell upon the students and hauled them off to prison on a charge of plotting against the Governor-General. This was such a thing as could happen everywhere in the country and did happen every day and it only added to the rising revolt among the people, a silent smoldering which would burst into flames, if hope became opportunity.

When Induk came into the village she saw that it was swarming with soldiers today, a sight not usual in this quiet place. She argued in her mind as to whether she should not return unobtrusively to her house, but she remembered that Yul-han had especially asked about a fish of which he was fond and which was in brief season now. She walked on then, the child on her back, and as she passed the wineshop from which she had helped Ippun to escape, the wineshop keeper came outside his door to be among the soldiers. His face was red with drinking, although the day was not yet at noon, and he laughed and talked to the soldiers, who had also been drinking. Some could drink and remain themselves, but the peculiarity of the invaders was that drink made them ribald and bolder even than they were when sober.

The wineshop keeper saw his chance now for revenge and when Induk passed with the child clinging to her back he pointed at her with his forefinger and shouted, “There goes a Christian and the wife of a teacher in that Christian school where the students cried out yesterday against the noble Governor-General! I have even heard her cry out Mansei herself!”

Upon this the soldiers shouted for the village police who came running. Since police were always Japanese they and the soldiers surrounded Induk there in the middle of the street while the people went into their houses and shut their doors in terror so that they might have no part in whatever took place. Induk was alone then, with the child on her back. Seeing herself surrounded by angry faces, the child began to cry, whereupon a policeman snatched her from Induk’s back and threw her aside upon the stone-cobbled street. Other police seized Induk herself and held her hands behind her back.

“Have you ever cried Mansei?” a petty officer among the soldiers demanded.

His face was red and his eyes glittered. His short black hair stood erect on his head and he lifted his gun as though he were about to strike her with the butt. Induk was desperate and frightened, the screams of the child wracking her ears, and she did not know what to do. She remained silent, looking from one face to the other until her eyes caught the sight of the wineshop keeper.

“You,” she faltered. “I beg you — we are Korean, you and I—”

He laughed loud coarse laughter. “Now you beg me,” he chortled. “Now you are a beggar—”

“Take her to the police station,” the officer ordered. “Question her and get the truth from her. Did she or did she not shout Mansei?”

Induk’s heart all but stopped its beat. If she were in the police station where none could see what might happen, then she would be lost. She made haste to confess whatever would help her.

“It may be,” she faltered, her mouth so dry she could scarcely speak the words, “it may be that at some time, long ago, before I understood — it may be that I did cry Mansei, but I promise you—”

It was enough. The soldiers yelled and clapped their hands and the police seized her and hustled her down the street to the police station. Now Induk was all mother and she fought and kicked at the men and tore their faces with her nails.

“My child,” she gasped. “I cannot leave my child here alone—”

The child had run after her, screaming and sobbing, but a soldier seized her and thrust her down to the ground and threatened her with his bayonet. At this Induk was beside herself when suddenly a door opened and a woman ran out and took up the child and ran back with her into the house. Then Induk was quiet. She wiped her face with the hem of her skirt, but before she could speak the police seized her again. They bound her hands behind her back with a strip of cloth and forced her on. In a few minutes she was at the police station, surrounded by men. Terror filled her mind and her body. Her blood ran slow and cold in her veins, her eyes blurred, and her breath stopped in her breast.

As she entered the door of the low brick building a man who stood behind her, whether soldier or police she did not know, stretched out his leg and gave her a strong kick and she fell forward into the room. She struggled to get up but her bound wrists held her down and before she could do more than lift her head a policeman put his foot on her neck and began to beat her with his club. Then he hauled her to her feet and unbound her hands. No sooner had she drawn her breath and smoothed back her hair than the Chief of Police, who had entered the room meanwhile, ordered her to undress. She stared at him, unbelieving. She knew that many times women had been seized thus and made to strip themselves naked, but now that it was herself, she could not move. She only stood staring at him, as though she had not heard.

“Take off your clothes!” he bellowed.

She found her voice somehow. “Sir,” she stammered, “sir, I am the wife of — of — a respected man — I am a mother — For the sake of decency — do not — do not—”

With a strange howl the men rushed forward and tore off her garments. She clung to her undergarments but they were torn out of her hands. She tried to sit down to hide herself but they forced her up. She turned to the wall, trying to conceal herself from the many men in the room but they forced her to turn around again. She tried to shelter herself with her arms, but one man twisted her arms and held her hands behind her back and the others beat and kicked her. Bruised and bleeding, she would have fallen to the floor but they held her up to continue the beating until her head fell forward on her breast and she knew no more.

In the village word of what was happening flew from house to house. Among the villagers some stayed in their houses from dire fear, but others gathered in the street in a fury and outrage, and the hotbloods among them were for attacking the police station and rescuing Induk. Others declared that this would only mean that they and their families would next be attacked. After such argument two among them who were Christians were chosen to go to the police station and protest against the stripping of women.

Some hours had passed before this decision was come to, and when the two went to the police station, both old men and near the end of their days anyway, they found no women there. Wherever Induk was, they did not see her. Instead the Chief of Police received them courteously, sitting behind his desk in his office. When they spoke against the stripping of women, declaring it unlawful, the Chief of Police was only cold.

“You are mistaken,” he said shortly. “It is not against our law. We must strip prisoners to see that they carry no illegal papers.”

The older of the two men spoke up bravely. “Then why do you strip only young women? And why do you not also strip men?”

To this the Chief of Police made no reply. For a long moment he glared at the two old men in their white robes and tall black hats, staves in their hands to support them, and they looked steadily back at him and showed no fear. He turned then to a soldier who stood in the room with his bayonet fixed.

“Show these men out,” he ordered.

The soldier put down his gun and seized each old man by a shoulder and led them out. As soon as he opened the door, however, he saw that a crowd stood there, angry and defiant.

“Where is the woman?” one shouted.

“Let the woman come out free!” another yelled.

“Put us in prison, too, or release the woman!” others cried.

Such shouts went up that the Chief of Police rose from his seat and went to the door and made himself stiff and straight and hoped thereby to frighten them into silence. Far from this, they shouted more loudly than ever. He hesitated a moment and then shouted back at them, whereupon they shouted still more so that he could not be heard. He hesitated and then turned back into the room.

“Let the woman go free,” he muttered. “One woman is not worth so much time and trouble.”

The crowd waited, the two old men standing in front, side by side. In a few minutes two soldiers came out with Induk hanging between them. She was conscious, but she could not speak. Blood had dried on her face and half-clothed body, but under the dried crust fresh blood, bright red, flowed out slowly. A great moan rose from the crowd. A strong young man came forward and took her on his back and carried her away. The crowd followed, the men groaning and the women wailing. Last of all the woman came who had sheltered Induk’s child, and so they took Induk and the child home again.

… When Yul-han came home at the end of the day as usual, his son with him, Ippun met him at the door, her hand on her mouth for silence.

“Where is my son’s mother?” Yul-han asked, for Induk was always at the door to meet him and take off his shoes.

Ippun led him aside into the kitchen. “My mistress was beaten,” she said in a loud whisper, her garlic breath at his nostrils.

He stepped back. “Beaten?”

She began the story and he listened, unbelieving and yet knowing that what he heard was true. He did not wait for Ippun to finish.

“What can we do when a decent woman is not safe outside her husband’s house,” he muttered and he hastened to the room where Induk lay on her bed. Ippun had bound her head and washed her many wounds, and she lay there stiffly, her lips puffed and her eyes swollen shut. He knelt down beside her.

“My wife, my heart, what have they done to you?”

Tears came from under Induk’s purpled eyelids, thick tears like pus.

“Tell no one,” she whispered.

“Let me fetch my mother,” Yul-han urged.

“No one — especially no woman — not even my own mother,” Induk whispered.

“Then I must get the American doctor immediately.”

So saying, he went again to the city, only stopping long enough before he went to bid Ippun not to tell his parents.

“I will tell them myself later,” he said and made haste away.

Neither he nor Ippun noticed that Liang had heard everything, for she was in the kitchen again, feeding the little girl, who clung to her now that the mother could not care for her. When Liang saw his father gone, he went to his mother’s room and stood in the doorway, and stared at the fearful sight. This was his mother! He put both hands to his mouth to stop his sobs and then he ran outside and into the bamboo grove and threw himself down against the earth.

First Yul-han went to the missionary and told him what had happened to Induk and then the two went together to the American doctor, and Yul-han told him how Induk was wounded and swollen by blows. The two Americans looked at one another.

“How long can we be silent?” the doctor muttered between his teeth. “Are we not to defend these people whom we came to serve?”

He put his tools together and with no more talk he went to Yul-han’s house. Skillfully the American washed all wounds, and he gave Induk a drug to breathe which put her to sleep and he took needle and thread and stitched shreds of torn flesh together again.

While this went on, Liang had come to the door and stood looking in. At first he was frightened, and he covered his mouth with his hands to keep back a cry. Then as he saw his mother peacefully sleeping he tiptoed into the room and came to his father’s side and slipped his hand into his father’s hand, all this in silence.

When the doctor was finished he saw the boy and smiled at him, and Liang was encouraged to ask a question. He came near and looked up at the American with grave eyes.

“Will you tell Woodrow Wilson to help my mother?”

Yul-han hastened to explain how Liang had made the American President his idol. The doctor listened as he gathered his tools again and nodding toward Induk, who still slept, he spoke to Yul-han.

“Your wife will be well again in a few days but she must rest. Lucky that she did not lose what is in her.”

Then he paused for a moment before Liang, who still stood straight and tall and watching all he did.

“Better not to have idols,” he said and a sad smile trembled about his mouth as he went away.

Late that evening when Induk was still sleeping under the drug which the American had given her, and while Ippun fed his two children and put them to bed, Yul-han went to his father. Il-han was already in his night garments, and when he opened the door, a candle in his hand, the flickering light spread uncertain shadows and Yul-han saw for the first time how age had gripped his father. All his life he had leaned on his father. Even when he was distant from him because of some argument it was only for a while and soon he came back again. Now he stood irresolute. Should he put his woes, too, on his father’s back?

“Come in,” Il-han said. “The candle gutters in the wind.”

Yul-han demurred. “It is too late.”

“No, no,” Il-han insisted.

His need was so great that Yul-han could not resist. He came in and Il-han led him into the library and put the candle on the table.

“Sit down,” he said.

He sat in his usual place but Yul-han was too restless to sit. He stood, looking down at his father, thinking how to begin so that his father would not suffer shock. Suddenly his throat was caught in such a knot of sobbing that he could not say anything. However he tried to control himself he found his body shaking, his face twisting. Il-han was alarmed indeed. This calm son of his!

“Speak out,” he commanded. “Else something will break in you.”

The sound of his father’s firm voice had its old power over Yul-han now as when he was a child, and abruptly, in jerks and pauses, he told the bare story of what had happened to Induk. Il-han listened, his eyes wide, his lips pressed together, and he did not once interrupt. It was soon told. Yul-han felt the lump in his throat melt away. He was able to breathe. He sat down and wiped his face with his white silk kerchief.

“Father,” he said, “I must join the people. I can no longer stand apart.”

“We must both do that which we have never done before,” Il-han replied. He hesitated, debating in himself whether he should not now tell Yul-han of his elder brother, and then he knew he must.

“Son,” he went on, “you spoke of a man who hides behind the name of the Living Reed. That man is your brother.”

“I know, Father,” Yul-han replied, and went on to tell of how Yul-chun had come to him in the night, and Il-han related the details of the trial that he had seen with his own eyes. He told Yul-han why he had not shared his knowledge with him then, nor even with Sunia, for if she had known she would have found ways of taking food and fresh clothing to him in his prison cell, which might have endangered all their lives.

The night wore on toward dawn, and it was a blessing that Sunia had gone early to sleep, else she would have been in and out time and again to ask why they did not go to bed and whether they would have food or drink. But she slept soundly and they talked on, nor was it idle talk. The two men came slowly to a vast resolution, set firm when Il-han suddenly slapped his two hands on the table before him.

“I will go again to America,” he declared. “I will go to see Woodrow Wilson myself. Face to face, I will tell him what our people suffer. He will put a stop to it. He has ways. He is the most powerful man on earth.”

Even this did not astonish Yul-han overmuch, in his present mood. He considered for a moment and then had a sudden thought.

“Father, you speak no English! You have forgotten after these years even what you used to know.”

Il-han would not be discouraged. “Put it that Woodrow Wilson speaks no Korean! No, no — it will not be difficult to find a young Korean to go with me who speaks both languages. Nothing is easier than to learn a language. It is only that I have no time now to learn again. I must go at once. It is not only for the sake of these here in our own country. Everywhere in the world our exiles are waiting for the day of freedom — two million and more abroad, waiting to come home! A million in Manchuria, eight hundred thousand in Siberia, three hundred thousand in Japan, and who knows how many in China, Mexico, Hawaii and America? America. I go there as an old man, a father. Woodrow Wilson will respect my gray hairs.”

“I will go with you,” Yul-han declared.

“You must not,” Il-han retorted.

“But my mother will not hear of your leaving home at your age to go so far!”

“I allow your mother much freedom,” Il-han said with dignity, “but not to decide what duty I am to perform. If evil is to befall me and I die in a strange land, then all the more reason that you, my son, should be here to take my place in our family and our nation. Do not oppose me, my son! The war is near its end. The peace must be carved out for the future. I must have my part in it — why else do I live?”

So the two men came to agreement and Yul-han rose to depart before the sun came up over the wall. The sky was lit already with a rosy opaline light when he bade his father farewell. If they could do all they planned, Yul-han to discover a young man to accompany his father and Il-han to prepare for the journey, within seven days they would be on their way.

“And tomorrow,” Il-han said to his son as they parted, “I will tell your mother. It will exhaust me, but I shall not allow her to change my mind.”

… Yul-han knew the next day that his mother had somehow heard of what Induk had suffered for she came to his house in a quiet solemn mood, such as he had never seen in her before.

“Come in, Mother,” he said when she stood in the doorway.

“What of the child?” she asked Yul-han.

Yul-han supposed she spoke of his daughter. “She seems unharmed, and she is with Ippun.”

“No, no,” Sunia cried at him, “I mean the one not born!”

“She holds it safely in her,” he said, and led the way to Induk’s bed.

Sunia had never been affectionate with her son’s wife, but now she knelt on the floor and gazed tenderly at Induk, her tears flowing down her thin cheeks. She took Induk’s swollen hand and held it gently, and she sobbed once or twice before she could speak.

“How is it here?” she asked softly and laid her hand on Induk’s belly.

“I shielded myself,” Induk said, her voice coming faintly. “I turned myself this way and that when the blows fell.”

“To think that we women go on bearing in such times,” Sunia sighed.

They said little more, the two women, but in the silence they came nearer together than they had ever been, and Sunia rose after a little while, saying that she was brewing a special ginseng soup with whole chicken broth and when it was done she would bring it.

“Sleep, my daughter,” she said, and went away again.

And Induk did sleep, for she could not keep herself awake. Part of her drowsiness was her body’s need to escape but part was the foreign drug which the American doctor had left.

Sunia went to the outer door then, Yul-han following her, and on the threshold they paused for a few words.

“Has my father told you what he will do?” Yul-han inquired.

“He has told me,” Sunia said.

“Can you bear it?” Yul-han asked.

“No,” Sunia said, “but I must.”

With this she went away, and Yul-han watched her as she went and saw how bent her body was these days as though it bore a heavy weight, the head drooping and the shoulders dropped. He remembered her straight and slender and her head held always high.

Yet when she was gone, his mind returned to its work. Whom should he send with his father? He cast about for someone he knew and reflecting upon this one and that his mind fixed on his fellow teacher, Sung-man, and he sent word to him by his father’s servant, inviting him to meet in the teashop where they had met before. He had pondered whether this was the safest place to discuss dangerous matters, but so vigilant were the police that he dared not seem to do anything hidden. Wherever he might go in secret with Sung-man some spy would discover it, either Japanese or a traitorous Korean.

The servant brought back word that Sung-man would meet him the next evening and so they met. In the midst of the full teahouse, and all the busy noise of men coming and going and servants running everywhere with tea and food, Yul-han put it to Sung-man whether he would go with his father to America. Sung-man, who seemed always careless of everything except his food, listened while he guzzled a bowl of noodles. Without changing the careless look on his face or the careless grin he wore as disguise, he filled his mouth and swallowed two great gulps and then, as though he told a joke, he said that he would go whenever Yul-han wished. Moreover, he could provide the money, for although he himself had no money beyond what he earned, yet he knew where money was.

“Are you a member of that—”

Yul-han put the half question, for he would not say the New Peoples Society, but Sung-man nodded.

“They are also in that country you have named,” he added.

The fighters for Korean independence were also in America! Yul-han received this news with surprise and comfort. His father would be among his own countrymen, there would be persons to welcome him and see that he was safe. He looked at Sung-man’s silly face with new respect. How much was hidden behind that grotesquerie!

“There remains only the matter of how to leave one place and enter another,” he observed.

“You are a Christian,” was Sung-man’s quick reply. “You can enter through the missionaries,” and laughing, as though he was telling a joke, Sung-man lifted his empty bowl and pounded the table and bawled to a waiter to fill it again.

… “They can’t go straight to America,” the missionary said to the doctor.

They sat together with Yul-han in the vestry of the church. He had feared that they would not help him, for he knew the orders from their superiors abroad was that they were not to mingle in the affairs of government. Yet these two Americans sat here in homely fashion, talking as calmly as though they discussed a matter of business. Looking from one plain face to the other, hearing the hearty voices, perceiving the good sense, which was their nature, he knew that whatever they were in race and nation, they were his friends and the friends of his people. He listened while they planned how his father and Sung-man would go to Europe and from there secretly to America, and how when they reached their destination, they, missionary and doctor, would see that the two Koreans were met by Christians and taken to private homes. Everywhere they would be met by Christians and sent on to others, and so all was planned to take place immediately.

“How can I thank you?” Yul-han said when he rose to leave.

The missionary clapped him on the back and made him wince. Never could Yul-han be used to such friendly blows, accustomed as he was to the tradition of his own countrymen that one did not lay hands on the person of another.

“We are Christian brothers,” the missionary shouted.

Yul-han went home, much moved by what had taken place, and he found Induk able to sit up, although she could not bear to move from her pillows so sore was her whole body. He knelt beside her and sent Ippun away and he told her everything. She listened, and then she put out her bandaged hand and he took it.

“This is why I was put to such suffering,” she said. “Out of evil good has come.”

He knew she spoke from Christian faith but he was still too new a Christian to believe that it was necessary for one to suffer in order that others might be saved. Yet he would not distress her now with his doubts. Let her have the comfort of her soul, and so he sat holding her bandaged hand.

“The American President is here,” Sung-man said. “We are fortunate. He leaves tomorrow for Boston.”

Il-han drew a deep breath. All morning he had sat waiting in his cramped room in a cheap hotel in Paris, where he had arrived two days ago from India. They had heard contradictory news. Wilson had already gone, he had not gone. He was failing in the Peace Conference, he was not failing. The Fourteen Points were being changed by the Allies, yet he was fighting bravely. No, he was not fighting bravely, he was allowing himself to be swayed. No one knew what was happening. Koreans, exiled in France as they were in many countries, had come together in Paris, anxious and trying to sift out the truth.

Il-han, listening the night before in their meeting here in his room, had said nothing until the end when he had heard everything. Then he had spoken firmly and quietly.

“I will go myself tomorrow, wherever the American President is, and face to face—”

He had been interrupted by half a dozen voices. “Do you think we are the only people? Every small nation in the world has sent its people to speak to Woodrow Wilson! And what will you say that they have not said?”

Il-han was unmoved. He felt dazed by the distance from home, he missed Sunia with a dull ache in his breast which he could not forget, he was homesick and ashamed of it, and yet his will held firm to its purpose. He must see Wilson face to face and tell him — tell him — What would he tell him? Sleepless in strange beds raised high from the floor so that he was afraid to turn himself over lest he fall to the floor, he had tried to plan what he would say.

“When I am face to face with him,” he had told them doggedly, “I shall know what to say. The words will come of themselves out of my heart where they have long been pent.”

So high he looked, indeed so much the noble yangban, that the younger men could say nothing. Sung-man took his part always.

“I know that what our father-friend says is true. He is of the same generation as Wilson and in courtesy Wilson will hear him when he might hurry past us.”

They had agreed to meet early the next morning and wait for Wilson in the lobby of the Crillon Hotel, where he was staying. Again Il-han was restless all night until at last Sung-man rose and lifted the mattress from the two high beds and laid them on the floor and took away the soft hot pillows and laid two books under the bottom sheets instead, and toward dawn Il-han drifted into brief sleep. He woke early and with the urgency of the aged he pressed Sung-man to rise, and so too early they were waiting in the lobby. Yet early as they were, some had come before them. A handful of Polish peasants in their garments of homespun wool embroidered in designs of scarlet were already there, wearing on their heads high hats of black fur. They had brought with them a priest who could speak French, and so could explain that in the new boundaries which had been made by the war, the corner of Poland where they lived had been given to Czechoslovakia, and they wanted their land to be in Poland and not in Czechoslovakia. They, too, in their far part of the world, had heard that the American President was in Paris, he who had said that people should be free to determine for themselves by whom they should be governed. They had lost their way, the priest said, and so they had inquired of a Polish sheepherder, who knew the stars and the way to go. When the sheepherder learned their purpose, he left his sheep and came with them since he too wanted to be free and he watched the stars and pointed out the path. When they reached Warsaw, Polish patriots gave them money and sent them on to Paris and they had come straight down the wide boulevards to this hotel where they were told Woodrow Wilson was staying.

With these Il-han and his fellow countrymen waited, and soon they were joined by still others, all wearing the garments of their own people, refugees from Armenia, land people from the Ukraine, Jews from Bessarabia and Dobrudja, Swedes who yearned to get back the lost Aaland Isles, chieftains from distant clans in the Caucasus and the Carpathian mountains, Arabs from Iraq, tribesmen from Albania and from the Hedjaz. All these and many others who had lost their countries, their governments and their languages now came to the American President as their savior, impelled by the need to pour out upon him their manifold sufferings.

He came at last, the tall thin man, his face desperate with weariness. That was what Il-han saw first as Wilson came through a door, his face, desperate with weariness. He paused, irresolute, he spoke in a low voice to those who were with him. They argued, but he turned and went out through the door by which he had come. A young man spoke to them in English and Sung-man translated for Il-han.

“We are asked to come upstairs to the President’s private rooms.”

“I will walk,” Il-han said. “I will not go up in that small climbing box.”

So he and Sung-man went up the carpeted stairs and into a great room. Wilson stood there by a long table waiting for them, and Il-han, pressing toward the front, saw how his left hand trembled. He was very white, the paleness of his face enhanced by his knee-length black coat and his dark gray trousers. His hair was nearly white, too, and his face was lined. But they all pressed forward, and the peasants kissed the hem of his coat and knelt until their foreheads touched the floor.

Wilson said nothing at first and a man spoke for him, asking that each group put its case through its leader, and they would then proceed in order of the English alphabet, and he begged them to speak as quickly as possible for the Peace Conference waited upon the President. They tried to do what he wished and when it came to Il-han’s turn, he pressed into Wilson’s hand a long paper he had written which Sung-man had translated into English, and he said in his own language, “Sir and most Honored, we have come from Korea. Our people are dying under the invader’s rule. Sir, our country has a written history of four thousand years, and we have been a center of civilization for the surrounding nations, surviving all invasions until now. You — only you — are our hope in all this world and for the ages to come.”

While Sung-man translated, Il-han looked into the sad blue eyes of an aging man, he saw the firm mouth quiver and smile and the lips press themselves together again. Before he could reply, Wilson stumbled as though he would fall and two young men on his staff stepped forward to support him.

One of them said in a low voice to Wilson, “I hope you won’t speak of self-determination again, sir. It’s dangerous to put such an idea into the minds of certain races, I assure you. They’ll make impossible demands on you and the Peace Conference. The phrase is simply loaded with dynamite. It’s a pity you ever uttered it, Mr. President. It will cause a lot of misery.”

Sung-man took Il-han aside and translated for him and hearing it, Il-han felt a misery creep into his heart and his belly. He turned his head to see what Wilson would say. The American’s face had changed to a greenish hue and he was stammering in a broken voice.

“I am ill — I’m very sorry — I must be excused—”

His young men caught him by the arms then and led him away. When he was gone blankness fell upon them all. They had been strangers at first, these people from many countries. Then for a brief moment they had been comrades in a common cause. Now they were strangers again.

“Let us go home,” Il-han said. “Let us go home.”

Yul-han listened in silence as his father told the long story, his eyes upon his father’s face. Neither he nor his mother had dared to put into words the great change they saw there. Il-han had left home looking a man of his years, thin as all were thin nowadays who were not traitors, but healthy. Now he had come home an old man. Yet he would not allow anyone to blame Wilson.

“He is wise beyond his times,” Il-han declared. “He did not know the world — true, I grant that. He did not know how tyrants rule, and how many long to be free. His dream will shape the world, nevertheless — not for us in our generation but for your children, my son — perhaps for your children. I regret nothing. I looked in his face. I saw a man stricken by his own pity for us to whom he could not fulfill his promises.”

Induk was there, and Sunia, and Induk spoke softly. “He is a man crucified.”

She was well again but she had lost her calm good looks.

Across her neck and face lay a great crimson scar, and Il-han regarded her with a tenderness he had never felt before.

“It has been a lesson for me,” he said. “I know now that we must trust to ourselves only. No one will help us.”

Induk looked at him bravely. “Father, let us trust God!”

“Ah, I do not know your God,” Il-han replied. And thinking the reply too short he added in courtesy, “Ask for his help, if it will comfort you.”

… While his father had been away Yul-han had steadfastly carried out his determination to become a member of the New Peoples Society, but he did not tell Induk. Her nature was timid and delicate, and the torture to which she had been subjected increased these qualities in her. She became even more devoted in her religion, spending much time in prayer, and she began to visit her childhood home. It was not usual for a daughter to cling to her blood family, but Induk now did so, since they were Christian and she found in their presence a support and strength which she did not find elsewhere. Her father was an officer in his church while earning his living by a small silk shop. Her mother was a lady of good family but she had not learned to read until she became a Christian, and then she made great effort so that she could read the Christian Scriptures. Since Induk’s torture, her family had doubled their hours of prayer, and in their despair and terror of what might happen next they became more than ever devout, beseeching God in constant prayers to save them and save their country. To know that Yul-han had become a member of so dangerous a company as the New Peoples Society would have overwhelmed them and he would not tell them.

This company, as he knew, was spread into many countries and had created centers everywhere to work for the freedom of Korea. In America a Korean government-in-exile was in preparation for the day when they could declare themselves free. Secret news of such matters flew around the world by printed page, by written letters, by spoken words. In Philadelphia—

“Where is Philadelphia?” Yul-han asked his father.

The time was evening, at twilight, in a day unseasonably mild for the second solar month of that Christian year, nineteen hundred and nineteen. Four days ago snow was melted and the buds were swelling on the plum trees. Tomorrow it might be winter again.

Il-han had taken to smoking a bamboo pipe since his return from abroad and he paused to draw a puff or two while he searched his memory.

“Philadelphia is a city in the eastern part of the United States near the sea but not on the sea,” he said. “A largish city, yes, but what I remember is a great bell there. They call it the Liberty Bell. I believe it was struck to declare American independence. It stands in a building — a hall named Independence. We were taken to see it.”

“Our people in America are planning a great meeting there,” Yul-han said. “They are writing a constitution which they will read in that hall in the presence of the great bell. And here we have written a Declaration of Independence. I have committed it to memory and destroyed the paper. So we have been commanded to do. Each of us knows it by heart.”

He closed his eyes and began to chant under his breath. “‘We herewith proclaim the independence of Korea and the liberty of the Korean people. We tell it to the world in witness of the equality of all nations and we pass it on to posterity as their inherent right.

“‘We make this proclamation, having behind us 5,000 years of history, and 20,000,000 of a united loyal people. We take this step to insure to our children for all time to come personal liberty, in accord with the awakening consciousness of the new era. This is the clear leading of God, the moving principle of the present age, the just claim of the whole human race! It is something that cannot be stamped out, or stifled, or gagged, or suppressed by any means.

“‘Victims of an older age, when brute force and the spirit of plunder ruled, we have come after these long thousands of years to experience the agony of ten years of foreign oppression, with every loss to the right to live, every restriction of the freedom of thought, every damage done to the dignity of life, every opportunity lost for a share in the intelligent advance of the age in which we live.

“‘Assuredly, if the defects of the past are to be rectified, if the agony of the present is to be unloosed, if the future oppression is to be avoided, if thought is to be set free, if right of action is to be given a place, if we are to attain to any way of progress, if we are to deliver our children from the painful, shameful heritage, if we are to leave blessing and happiness intact for those who succeed us, the first of all necessary things is the clear-cut independence of our people. What cannot our twenty millions do, every man with sword in heart, in this day when human nature and conscience are making a stand for truth and right? What barrier can we not break, what purpose can we not accomplish?’”

Il-han listened, his head bowed. Over his heart and into his mind a great peace descended. The purpose of his people had been carved clear and plain in stately words.

Days passed and Yul-han was seldom at home in the evenings. He told Induk that he had new work to do but what it was he did not say, and she feared to know and would not ask. She spent her evenings alone, reading the Sacred Scriptures and praying often, her children asleep beside her while she waited for the yet unborn. She kept her candle lighted for Yul-han’s return but if by midnight he had not come, she obeyed his command that she go to bed and leave the house in darkness.

He could not have told her where he spent his evenings, even if he would, for he was never in the same place twice. He and his company met in open fields, under the darkness of trees; they met in caves in the mountains, in hidden gullies and behind rocks. He learned to walk in the black of the night, feeling the path with his feet, guided by a star hanging in the east over the dying sunset sky. He learned to know when another human being came near without a sound. He knew what the rustle of a bamboo meant, and how to give no sign when he felt a paper, folded small, thrust into the curve of his hand. He learned not to look up or to speak when a servant in a teashop gave him a message with his pot of tea, or a student in his class wrote words between the lines of an essay. He thought nothing of getting messages from any country in the world where his countrymen gathered their strength into one great dream.

Yet even here in their hearts, single for independence, there was division. One leader was for violence, declaring himself for an armed uprising inside their country, while another protested that such an uprising could not succeed since the invaders were far stronger and they would only make excuse that they were compelled to use force to quell the rebels. No, that leader said, the nation must resist without violence, protest but not by arms, and this protest must take place on some national occasion. This man prevailed, and Yul-han was with him. Prudent he was and wise beyond his years and he, too, believed that an armed attack against the rulers could only lead to defeat.

What occasion could there be? The Governor-General forbade all gatherings of the populace in public places. Even in churches there were always spies present, and Yul-han had more than once been called before the official who had let him be Christian to answer questions as to who was Christian and who was not and whether one Christian or another belonged to the New Peoples Society. He learned to lie easily and without conscience if a life could be saved by lies.

It was the old King who inadvertently came to their aid, and in this fashion. After the great war, the Japanese rulers, foreseeing that Korea would ask for independence, had written a petition to be signed by Koreans, saying that they were grateful to the Emperor of Japan for his good and kindly rule and that they were asking of their own free will to become a part of the Japanese nation. This petition the ruling Japanese had presented to the old King, now deposed, for him to sign. He had shown no courage during these years and his people had all but forgotten him, but, confronted with the heinous sheet, he summoned his strength and refused to sign it. His people were amazed and for the first time they acclaimed him and in his consequent agitation he had an apoplexy and he died. Since all knew he was thin and bloodless and since he had died two days before his death was announced, rumors flew about, one that he had been poisoned, and another that he had killed himself rather than give permission for his son to be married to the Japanese Princess Nashimoto. Whatever the cause, he was dead and Yul-han and his company seized the King’s death as an occasion for the announcement of the freedom of Korea. They disputed bitterly as to whether there should be a bloody uprising or a peaceful demonstration of what was now called the Mansei Revolution. The Christians were for peace instead of blood, and among these Yul-han was the leader. Nor were the Christians the only ones who so declared themselves. The sect of Chuntokyo, who believed in a God who was the Supreme Mind, and the sect of Hananim, who combined the Christian doctrine of brotherhood with the Confucian ethic and the Buddhist philosophy, joined with the Christians. These together had written the Declaration of Independence and Yul-han had spent long nights in a dark cellar under a temple, the monks assisting, while he and his fellows printed the Declaration from hand-carved wooden blocks upon thousands of sheets of papers. The sheets were sent throughout the country to every city, village and hamlet, to every farmhouse and every factory, and to Koreans over the whole world. Lovers of freedom in every country seized upon the sheets and treasured them.

And while this work was being done, thirty-three men, fifteen of them Christians, were preparing in secret the day of announcement of independence. In every township they set up a local committee, each committee knit to the next, and this though spies were everywhere. Meanwhile the leaders, in the name of the people, besought the rulers to allow them a day of mourning for the dead King, and the request was finally, though most unwillingly, granted. The first day of the third month was the day allotted and toward that day all worked together. The plan was this: crowds were to assemble everywhere, and the sign, village to village, was to be fires blazing on the mountains as beacons, until over the whole country people were ready to gather at the same hour to hear the announcement made of their independence. Then the crowds were to parade the streets of every city and town and village, waving their national flags and shouting the national cry, “Mansei! Mansei!”

… Somehow the secret was kept, the instructions carried in loaves of bread, in the coils of men’s hair, under their hats, in the long sleeves of women, until every citizen knew that on the first day of the third month, which was the seventh day of the week, at two hours past noon, all were to gather in their own streets. The Japanese rulers, still aware of nothing, had nevertheless feared what might happen, and to every hundred Koreans over the nation they had appointed a policeman and had added many hundreds of spies to those already at work.

At noon upon the chosen day the thirty-three signers of the Proclamation gathered to eat their noon meal together in the Bright Moon Restaurant in the capital city. As soon as the hour struck two, they rose and walked together to give themselves to the police, and this without violence or any resistance. Among them Yul-han walked first, his steps measured, his face calm.

The police at first were dazed when the men stood before them. They hesitated, not knowing whether they should arrest these ringleaders. In doubt they accepted them, but left them in a room in the police station, free except for two soldiers as guards, while they went to ask for orders from their superiors.

“These guards are not necessary,” Yul-han told them as they went. “We have no wish to escape. It is our purpose to go to prison.”

The police were further confounded by such words and fearing some trickery and shaking their heads, they went on. Meanwhile all over the nation the people were obeying instructions and the streets were crowded everywhere with singing, shouting people, waving flags and crying “Mansei.” But the thirty-three sat waiting with the two guards for many hours.

At the end of that time the police still had not returned, and going toward the window, Yul-han saw a strange small commotion. The glass was so clouded with dust that he could not see through, but as he watched, and he had learned to watch small signs without speaking, he saw a round place washed clean, and he saw that this spot was being washed clean by Ippun wetting her forefinger in her mouth and then rubbing the glass. To the clean spot she applied one eye and a part of her face, enough for her to see Yul-han and to motion to him violently with her finger crooked. The guards by this time were careless and drowsy, and without sound he went to the door, tried it and found it not locked and so he went out. It was twilight and to the east he saw a glow that lighted the sky.

East? Then it could not be the sunset.

“Fire!” Ippun breathed hoarsely at his ear. “They have set the church on fire. Your daughter is there — and her mother—”

He did not wait for more. Through the crowds still milling in the streets he ran, past the bellowing police and the soldiers everywhere beating and berating the people, stooping to crush himself between legs and pushing bodies out of his way. Now he knew why they had been left so long with only two guards. The whole city was under attack. Hundreds of men and women and children were lying in the streets, bleeding from the blows of clubs, dead from the bullets of guns. He stayed neither to look nor to ask. He ran to the church and saw it ablaze. He ran up the steps and tried the doors. They were locked. From within came cries and wailing and yet above all he heard the sound of human voices soaring through the flames, singing the words of a Christian hymn.

“Nearer my God to thee—”

“Induk!” he shouted. “Induk — Induk!”

He remembered the vestry and the little door there that led into the church. That door they may have forgotten to lock! The flames were only on the roof. She might still be alive and he could snatch her out of the fire. He ran through the glittering brightness, the blackening shadows, the clouds of smoke to the rear of the church. Ah, the door was not locked! He was choking and coughing in the vestry, feeling his way to the door into the church. He felt the knob. The door opened and he flung himself into the shadows streaked with wild and livid light. At the same moment he heard a thunder of falling beams, a booming crash and human voices screaming in agony. The blazing roof had fallen in. For one instant he knew, and then he knew no more.

… Outside, Ippun waited. Now she saw and she covered her ears with her hands and shut her eyes and ran through the night. She ran without stopping, her arms flailing like wings at her shoulders to speed her way. Through the unguarded city gate she ran, and down the country road until she reached Il-han’s house. Still without stopping, stark-mad with fright and horror, she ran into the house where Il-han and Sunia sat side by side. Before them on the ondul floor Liang played with a vehicle he had made from a paper box. He had built wheels to it, and he was working with a broken wheel.

Upon these Ippun burst, her hair streaming down her back and her face a grimace, the wide mouth stretched, the eyes ready to burst from their sockets. She pointed with her shaking forefinger at the child.

“That — that one,” she stammered, her voice a high strange whine, “that one — he is all you have left—”

And she fell upon the floor unconscious.

All, all was lost. Before the night had passed, Il-han knew that thousands lay dying in the streets. In every city, town and hamlet they lay dying. Before days had passed he knew that villages blazed against the night sky and other Christian churches were burned, many with their congregation inside. The deadly stench of roasted human flesh hung about the streets of the capital.

… Meanwhile the beatings continued of those who had been taken prisoner. The missionary haunted the streets like a white ghost to prevent what he could, and an American, hired to be adviser to the Japanese, could not restrain his horror though he dared not give his name. What he wrote to his own countrymen and what was printed in America was printed also on the small sheets which Il-han still found under his door:

A few hundred yards from where I sit, the beating goes on, day after day. The victims are tied down to a frame and beaten on the naked body with rods until they become unconscious. Then cold water is poured on them until they are revived, when the process is repeated many times. Men and women and children are shot down or bayoneted. The Christian Church is especially chosen as an object of fury, and to the Christians is meted out special severity.

Il-han read this as he read all else that was brought to him by his servant or told to him by those who passed his house, and his heart was cold as death itself. His mind knew, but his heart no longer felt. Sunia, too, neither spoke nor wept. She moved about her house slowly as though she were very old, beyond seeing or hearing or feeling. Her only thought was for Liang, and she stayed by him night and day and he was never out of her sight. Ippun, without request or permission, came to live with them, and she did the work of house and garden and they let her.

Some explanation must be made to his grandchild, Il-han told himself, yet what could he say? For the first few days he said nothing. Then he went to Sunia.

“What shall we tell the child?” he inquired.

She looked at him with lackluster eyes. “I will feed and clothe him, but do not ask me to do more.”

Yet the matter could not be put off, for Liang began to press.

“Where is my father?” he asked. “Why shall I not go home?”

He forgot to eat, and he sat with his chopsticks loose in his hand.

“When I go home—” he began again and then he paused. “When shall I go home?”

Il-han was hard put to it until he remembered that the Christians believed that all good souls went to heaven, and he seized upon the thought.

“Your father and your mother and your little sister have all gone to heaven,” he told the child.

Liang had heard of heaven, and he listened to this with a grave face. “Is heaven far?” he asked.

“No,” Il-han said, “it is no more than a minute away.”

“Then why do we not go, too?” Liang asked.

“We cannot go without invitation,” Il-han said. “When we are sent for, we go.”

“Shall I go with you and my grandmother and Ippun?” Liang asked.

“Yes,” Il-han said. “We will go together—”

All this he considered a lie, yet the more he considered it the more he was not sure whether it was altogether so. Who knew what lay beyond death’s horizon?

“Meanwhile,” he told the child, “we will live together.”

He had still one great comfort, his secret that now began to spread through the company of the underground, that the Living Reed had escaped. The cell in which he had lived so long was small, it was said, only a little larger than a coffin, the floor of stones laid close one upon the other. Yet one day guards found it empty. Empty? No, for up through those stones a green young bamboo shoot had forced its way!

Among the people the news spread, a ray of morning sun breaking through the darkness of the night, and nowhere was this light more bright than in Il-han’s heart. He still had a living son.