In Manchuria, not far from Mukden, lived a well-to-do farmer by the
name of Lee. For some years the country had been much troubled by
mounted banditti who terrorized the people, stealing from them right
and left.
Mr. Lee called his neighbours together and after talking over the
existing conditions, they bound themselves together to act as watchmen
and resist the thieves even to the death.
Mr. Lee then went to the neighbouring villages and helped them to form
little companies of volunteers for the same purpose. This, in time,
reached the ears of the robbers, and they laid their plans accordingly.
One night in the midst of the autumn harvest, while the farmers were
celebrating with wine and music the “harvest festival,” the bandits
came upon the village. Mr. Lee called his followers together and a
great fight took place in the moonlight. At last the robbers set fire
to several houses in the village, and after stealing all they could
carry away with them, departed.
Every one was left weeping—grain and clothing gone, and some with their
homes in ashes. Every one was so busy with his own losses that it was
daylight before it was known that Mr. Lee was missing. After much
searching in the fields and at the near villages, they decided that he
must have been taken captive and carried to the robbers’ stronghold in
the mountains.
Now, Mr. Lee had a little daughter, thirteen years old, called “Jade.”
She was devoted to her father, and his constant companion. When, as the
day wore on, he did not return she refused to be comforted. She pleaded
with her mother and brothers to go with her to the neighbours and get
them to form a rescue party, but the neighbours were so full of their
own losses and fearful of another visit from the robbers that they
refused. They said, “If we go, we shall certainly be captured, and
either killed or held for a big ransom.”
Little Jade and her family knew it would do no good to appeal to the
magistrate, as such raids were frequent, and nothing was done to
prevent or punish; and all the family but the little daughter made up
their minds that nothing could be done, and they must await whatever
the gods had in store for them.
“Not so,” thought little Jade; “I will either save my father or die
with him.” Without saying anything to the other members of the family
she learned from questioning the villagers the location of the “Tigers’
Nest,” as the fastness of the thieves was called. She then started off
alone and after miles of weary walking she reached the place at
nightfall. She made direct for the cave and prostrating herself before
the entrance she began to weep and wail for her father. The robbers
came and looked fiercely at her. How she pleaded with those
hard-hearted men! They offered her food and money to go away; but she
only pleaded the harder. They then became angry and tried to drive her
away. For two days and nights she knelt in front of the cave; she would
neither eat nor sleep. Many of the robbers were fathers and their
hearts grew tender toward the little maid as hour after hour her wail
fell upon their ears, and they saw her little face swollen and drawn
with long weeping and fasting.
At last the robber captain could endure it no longer, and after one
final effort to drive her away, he commanded that Mr. Lee be set free,
and that he and his little daughter be escorted beyond the hill region
by the robber band. At the close of the fourth day they arrived at
their home, where there was great rejoicing and much praise for brave
little Jade.
When Jade was seventeen the young man she was engaged to marry died and
she took the vow of “widowhood,” and also that she would help support
the aged father and mother of her betrothed. Although she had never
seen any of the family this was considered very meritorious in Jade,
and she was held up as a model girl to all others in the region.
She took in sewing and embroidery and the money she thus earned was
sent to the old people. She is at present living near Mukden, and it is
rumoured that she is to be one of the teachers in a girls’ school to be
opened in that city.