The cruel death of their two beautiful boys was the beginning of dark days for _our_ Mr. and Mrs. Wang. The old grandmother died shortly after from excess of rage. (The fits of rage to which women give way in China cannot easily be understood by the Westerner). It was in one of these attacks, caused no doubt by disappointment at the result of her treatment of her grandchildren, that the poor old autocrat collapsed and died. The day before the funeral was to take place the old husband was found dead in bed. An expensive funeral and excessive feasting which followed and which custom required reduced the family to desperate financial straits. The days following the funeral were tempestuous ones for the Wang household, and the "domestic typhoons," as they have been correctly described, were fiercer and more frequent than ever. At last the day came when the family mutually decided to separate, which they did in true Chinese fashion—each couple would be responsible for their own finances, but would continue to live as before "within the one gate." This arrangement would have been favorable to our branch of the family had not Mr. Wang lost his situation as teacher almost immediately after the change. Then followed several moons (months) of fruitless search for employment. Everything that could be was sold or pawned to get food. One day Mr. Wang’s boatman brother returned from the coast. He told them of a man who had come up on their boat who was looking for a teacher for a missionary living in an adjoining province, and he urged Mr. Wang to take this position. The women-folk, however, bitterly opposed saying, "If he once gets under the spell of the foreigner we shall never hear of him again." But they could not starve, and when it was learned the salary would be considerably more than what he had been getting even the women yielded. Mr. Wang was himself only half inclined to go, for he could not get out of his mind the remembrance of stories he had heard of wholesale poisoning carried on by the missionaries. Shortly after his departure a little girl came to comfort Mrs. Wang in her loneliness. Now that she was her own mistress, she chose a pretty name for the child, little dreaming what a beautiful herald it was of the brighter day so soon to dawn, she called it Spring! One morning when little Spring was just three weeks old, the Wang family received a great surprise. They were all seated at their own doorsteps or squatting around the court, each with a bowl of millet poised in one hand and a pair of chop sticks in the other, when the front gate opened and who should appear but Mr. Wang. It was as if a bomb had fallen! In a few moments the court was crowded with curious neighbors, all eager to hear the reason for his return.