"Come, is this all you want?" asked the magistrate impatiently and evidently resenting the conversation now going on between Helen and Mr. Kit-ze.
"Yes, it is all your wretched servant has to ask of you," replied Mr. Kit-ze. "O most honorable," he began to plead, "spare, I entreat you, the beautiful hair of her who is the daughter of the exalted teacher, and nothing more will I ask of you. Nothing!"
"But the miriok, Mr. Kit-ze, the miriok?" said Helen in an undertone and surprised that he had seemed to take no thought of it in his appeal to the magistrate. For he surely had heard enough of the proceedings to understand why she and Dorothy had been brought before the yangban.
"The miriok?" said Mr. Kit-ze softly and looking at her with eyes whose confidence touched her beyond expression. "He will give you the miriok. He has said it."
Then, as a sudden, strange expression came into his eyes, he glanced up quickly and straight toward the line of spectators. "There is another," he said, his lips moving nervously, "and I must!" He paused; then she heard him say again, "Oh, I must!"
Helen's heart leaped. Did he mean Mr. Choi-So? Had he seen him among the spectators? It was more than likely that he had, as the latter stood near to where Mr. Kit-ze was when he began to gesticulate to the magistrate.
"I can't see why your request shouldn't be granted," said the magistrate after a pause, and to Mr. Kit-ze; "especially as you have brought that at sight of which no gentleman could break his word," and he pointed to the streamer of yellow ribbon that Mr. Kit-ze still held. "I remember the service. Now let me hear the request again."
Mr. Kit-ze repeated it with all the eloquence that heart and tongue could bestow upon it.
"Take the image from the old woman and give it to the young foreigner," said the magistrate, "and there will be no cutting of her hair," he added firmly.
As he uttered the last sentence, he threw his head up and glanced somewhat defiantly at the screen behind which he knew his wives were sitting. But the chief lady of his household was inexorable. Another message came to him, and quickly. She would renounce her desire for all of Helen's hair, but she must have some of it. A strand would now suffice her.