When at last the girl appeared, her aunt gave her some sweetmeats which she had specially prepared for her, and said, ‘My dear niece, I have brought you something nice to eat. You had better have it later when you are hungry. I will leave it behind the screen here for you.’ With these words she put the food behind the screen and went home again. The daughter’s room was in a building apart from the main house, and so no one saw her come or go.

After a while the Minister’s daughter began to feel hungry, and so she went to the screen to get the sweetmeats her aunt had put there. When she folded the screen back she found the boy hiding there. She thought he must be a ghost, and at once began to recite the Zu-Yog (Book of Changes). The boy did not vanish, but sat before her with a mournful expression on his face. Recovering from her surprise the Minister’s daughter asked him, ‘What are you, a ghost or a human being?  Why are you sitting there?’ He answered her and told her his whole story. She was deeply moved, and hid him in the wall closet, that he might be saved from his miserable destiny.

Then one of her friends came in, a girl who lived not far away, and was also the daughter of a Minister, Yi. They passed the time pleasantly, talking of one trifle or another, and then the daughter of the house asked her friend, ‘If someone were to come here who desperately needed help, what would you do?’ And her friend replied, ‘Why, I would do all I could to help, of course.’ So Gim’s daughter went to the wall closet and brought the boy out. ‘He is in deadly peril,’ she said. ‘We must do all we can to save his life.’ Then she shut him in the closet again, and the two girls sat up watching.

In the dead of night a big tiger broke into the house. It came and squatted before the daughter’s room, and humbly begged her, ‘Please give me the boy you have hidden.’ The two girls remonstrated with it sternly but quietly. ‘What a bloodthirsty creature you are,’ they said. ‘And no one is allowed into the Minister’s residence without permission. We cannot let you come in here, and the most unpardonable crime of all is to kill and eat a man.’ The tiger replied, ‘I have eaten 99 only sons. If I eat that boy tonight I will become a man. Please give him to me.’

But the two girls were unmoved by the tiger’s pleas, and began to recite the Book of Changes. The tiger prowled around the house snarling furiously, but at the sound of the first cockcrow it went away. The girls went to take the boy from the closet, and found him almost fainting in agony. They gave him thin rice gruel to eat, and he soon recovered completely. He was very relieved to hear that the tiger had gone, and thanked them profusely for their kind protection. They talked to him for a while, and found he had some talent for composing verses, so they advised him to enter for the examination for the Imperial Civil Service, which was to be held the following day. They found out what form and subject were to be set, and together composed a poem, which he learned by heart.