He was about to call out to the girl to save herself, when, with
a sudden swoop, the Tartar whom he had braced himself to resist,
bent in his saddle and made a dash for the child. But agile
little, Woo was quicker than the Tartar horseman. With a nimble
turn and a sudden spring, she dodged the Tartar's hand, darted
under his pony's legs, and with a shrill laugh of derision,
sprang up the sharp incline, and disappeared in one of the many
cliff caves before the now doubly baffled horsemen could see what
had become of her.
With a grunt of discomfiture and disgust, the Tartar riders
turned their ponies' heads and galloped off along the road that
skirted the yellow waters of the swift-flowing Hwang-ho. Then a
little yellow face peeped out of a cave farther up the cliff, a
black-haired, tightly braided head bobbed and twitched with
delight, and the next moment the good priest was heartily
thanking his small ally for so skilfully saving him from
threatened capture.
It was a cool September morning in the days of the great Emperor
Tai, twelve hundred and fifty years ago. And a great emperor was
Tai-tsung, though few, if any, of my young readers ever heard his
name.
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