Emerging from the grove, they stole across frozen stagnant water, among squalid red clay huts with tiny lattices under the thatching. Four soldiers, singing with locked arms as they passed, kicked a fallen Korean chimney—a tin kerosene can. Not a white-robed philosopher was in sight, but through the huts’ straw fences, they could see long-haired hags huddled over smoky braziers in which bubbled the head of a dog or hoof of a bull. Through low door-ways in the haze of tiny, ill-trimmed lamps, sore-covered children in soiled bright silks rolled on matless earth beside chests clamped with iron. At last the schoolhouse, white, high-gabled, and awkwardly occidental, faced them. They chained the bear to a rail of the steps, and without knocking entered a long empty room of half a dozen glass windows, its plain boards lit by two big swinging kerosene lamps, and decorated with British and Japanese flags. From the platform at the far end, behind a drawn red cotton curtain strung on a long wire, a spiral stair wound to the loft under the gable overhead. Chairs and benches were piled in the corners. Karin San tripped down the stair in her best iris kimono and big obi, pausing at intervals as she crossed the floor to bow the glittering comb in her black hair. Her powdered oval face resembled an enamel shell. With half closed eyes and red lips parted, she seemed striving to speak volumes of welcome, and to be intensely amused and overwhelmed by her inability. “_Kombomoi kombomoi_,”[1] she gasped and the captain responded, his heart beating faster, but his eyes suspicious of the vacant building. [1] “Good Evening!” “Very sorry, very sorry, Brewster San,” pleaded the little school mistress. “Tonight, no Uncle Tom. No show.” Little Eva’s red shawl hung from a nail over the platform, also the gray beard and spectacles of Uncle Tom, while on it rested a couple of buckets filled with ice-cakes. From wondering how that spectacular scene of Eliza’s crossing was to be portrayed—if a samisan could render the proper jumpy music—the captain’s eyes fixed Davy’s in mute wonder. “Military authority—Major Kumoda—just now order me no show,” Karin apologized, again bowing with a smile in which her visitors, though used to oriental deception, could read no duplicity. “Mebbe soldier come.” The soft chords in her neck glistened like velvet, but again the captain turned from them to his spy, saying, “Right you were in growlin’ to come here. Better say yer prayers, boy, if you Rooshians is as good at prayin’ as they tell. She’s snared us for the mustard-bellies.” “You shall not so accuse her!” burst out the spy. “May not her deed be honorable? Did not the soldiers open and read her missive? Having not found us on the hill, they have reason to look here at once.” But the schoolmistress had crept to a window and was looking out, her snub nose pressed tight against the pane. From outside came the mutter of voices, and crunch of feet on the lingering snow.