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By Root 4407 0

that if she cut the stalks of her, taro plants into short segments and packed them in heavy brine, with stones loaded on top of the barrel to keep the brew compressed, in time the stalks became pickled. With steamed fish or pork they were delicious, and as a result of her invention she acquired unexpected funds from her taro patch. She sold the flowers as vegetables, the leaves for spinach, and the uncooked roots to the king's poi factory on Fort Street. But the stems she kept for herself, and when they were properly pickled she loaded them into her two baskets and slung her bamboo pole across her shoulder. Barefooted, she went through the town hawking her Chinese sauerkraut. Dr. Whipple, observing her buoyant recovery from defeat, said to her one day, "Mrs. Kee, do you remember that field that I spoke about?"

Nyuk Tsin's eyes grew bright and Whipple marked how eagerly she awaited his next words, so he said slowly, "I've looked it over, and it isn't worth much, so I'm not going to sell it to you." Nyuk Tsin's face became a study in yellow despair, and Whipple was ashamed of his trick, so he added quickly, "I'm going to give it to you, Mrs. Kee."

Nyuk Tsin was only twenty-two at the time, but she felt like a very old woman who had lived a long life, hoping for certain things that were only now coming to pass. Her almond-shaped eyes filled with tears and she kept her hands pressed closely to her sides. To herself she thought: "The land could have been mine, rich land in the Fragrant Tree Country," and at this thought a pair of tears rolled down her cheeks. Aloud, she said as a dutiful wife, "Wu Chow's Father tells me I must not bother with land in this country. Soon we shall be returning to China."

"Too bad," Whipple replied, ready to dismiss the subject as one of no importance.

But in the mind of the stubborn Hakka woman the land hunger that she had inherited from generations of her forebears welled up strongly. In a kind of dumb panic she stood on the Whipple lawn and watched Dr. Whipple walking away from her, taking with him her only chance of salvation--the promise of land--and in response to a force greater than herself she called, "Dr. Whipple!"

The elderly scientist turned and recognized the agony through which his serving girl was going. Returning to her he asked gently, "Mrs. Kee, what is it?"

For a moment she hesitated, and tears splashed down her sun-browned face. Unable to speak, she stared at him and her mouth moved noiselessly. Finally, in a ghostly voice, she whispered her decision: "When Wu Chow's Father returns to China, I shall remain here."

"Oh, no!" Dr. Whipple interrupted quickly. "A wife must stay with her husband. I wouldn't think of giving you the land on any other terms."

The shocking probability that she was going to lose her land after all emboldened the little Chinese woman, and she confessed in a whisper: "He is not my husband, Dr. Whipple."

"I know," he said.

"He brought me here to sell me to the man you saw that day outside the fence. But he grew to like me a little, so he bought me for himself."

Dr. Whipple recalled the scene at the immigration shed and he sensed that what Nyuk Tsin was saying was true. But he was a minister at heart, and he now advised his maid: "Men often take women for strange reasons, Mrs. Kee, and later they grow to love them, and have happy families. It is your duty to go back to China with your husband."

"But when I get there," Nyuk Tsin pleaded, "I will not be allowed to stay with him in the Low Village. He would be ashamed of my big feet."

"What would you do?" Whipple asked with growing interest.

"I would have to live up in the Hakka village."

Dr. Whipple's conscience had often been stung by the inequities he witnessed in life, but he was convinced that obedience to duty was man's salvation. "Then go to the High Village, Mrs. Kee," he said gently. "Take your sons with you and lead a good life. Your gods will support you."

With cold logic she explained: "But my sons will be kept in the Low Village and I will be banished from them. They would not want