Among the bold men of the capital was General Pan (his given name is forgotten; people called him Pan Hushi), who lived in Guangde Ward; his family came from the Xiang and Han river country. He used to trade by boat for profit, and once moored on the riverbank. A monk came begging for food and stayed several days, and Pan gave alms with all his heart. As the monk left, he said to Pan, "Looking at your build and bearing, you are not like other merchants. Even your wife and children will all enjoy great fortune." He left him a string of jade prayer beads as a gift, saying that if he treasured them, they would not only make his wealth flow but later bring him official rank as well. After some years of trading here and there, Pan grew as rich as the great merchant princes of old. Later he took a post in the Left Army of the palace guard and built a mansion in the capital. He always treasured the beads, keeping them in an embroidered pouch inside a jade box, placed in his household shrine, and on the first of every month he took them out and bowed to them. One day he opened the box and the pouch, and the beads were gone. Yet the seals were exactly as before, and nothing else was missing. He was beside himself, taking it as a sign that his house was about to fall.
Pan's storekeeper had long known Wang Chao, a retired constable of the Capital Prefecture, nearly eighty years old, and told him about it in secret. Wang Chao said, "Strange. This is no ordinary thief's work. Let me try to find it for you, though I can't say whether I'll succeed." Some days later Wang Chao happened to pass along the north street of Shengye Ward. The spring rain had just cleared, and under a locust tree by the road stood a girl with her hair in three loops, about seventeen or eighteen, in ragged clothes and wooden clogs. Some young soldiers were playing kickball, and she caught the ball and kicked it back, sending it straight up several zhang into the air. A crowd gradually gathered. Wang Chao alone found it remarkable.
She lived in a short lane by the north gate of Shengye Ward with her mother, earning a living, it seemed, by needlework. Wang Chao found other pretexts to get to know her, and they came to call each other uncle and niece. Their home was very poor; she and her mother slept together on an earthen bed, and often days went by without a cooking fire. Yet sometimes she set out dishes with rare delicacies from land and water. When the first Dongting oranges were sent as tribute from Wu, no one in the capital had any apart from those the emperor bestowed on his chief ministers. Yet she secretly gave one to Wang Chao, saying, "Someone brought it out of the palace." She was strong-willed and decisive by nature, and Wang Chao grew very suspicious of her. Their visits went on like this for a full year.
One day Wang Chao brought wine and food and sat at his ease with her. He said slowly, "Your uncle has something serious to tell you, niece. I wonder how you'll take it." She said, "I'm always grateful for your great kindness and sorry I've nothing to repay it with. If it's in my power, I'd go through fire and water for you." Wang Chao said, "General Pan has lost his jade prayer beads. I wonder whether you know about it?" She smiled faintly. "How did you come to know of it?" Judging that she was not trying very hard to hide it, he went on, "If you could find them, niece, he would give you rich silks as a reward." The girl said, "Don't tell anyone. I took them as a game with some friends, and meant to return them in the end, but I kept putting it off. Tomorrow at dawn, uncle, wait for me in the pagoda courtyard of Ci'en Temple. I know someone has left the beads there."
Wang Chao went at the appointed time, and in a moment she arrived. The temple gate had just opened, but the pagoda door was still locked. She said to him, "In a little while, look up at the top of the pagoda and you'll see something." With that she ran off, swift as a flying bird. Suddenly she was up on the finial rings of the pagoda, raising a hand to signal Wang Chao, and in a flash she came down holding the beads. "Now you can take them back," she said. "Don't trouble yourself about any reward." Wang Chao took the beads to Pan and told him everything she had said. Pan secretly sent her gifts of gold, jade and silk. The next day Wang Chao went to visit her, and the house was empty. Feng Jian, a Supervising Secretary, had once heard that the capital was full of knights-errant. When he became Governor of the Capital he made discreet inquiries among his staff. They brought him Wang Chao, who told the whole story; and what the General said matched Wang Chao's account exactly.
