"
Eternal Life answered in irritation: "Did you not look at me with
lecherous eyes under my window? Did you not throw your handkerchief?
Did you not match the pair of my embroidered slippers?"
"All that is true. But about the rest?"
The Governor here interrupted:
"If one thing is true, the rest is also. What is the use of arguing
it? Since he refuses to write, let him be given thirty strokes of
the heavy bamboo, let him be cast into the cell for those who are
condemned to death."
Happily for Chang, his gaolers knew that he was very rich. They but
touched him with their blows, and led him to prison with as much care
as they would a butterfly. Each of them cried:
"Uncle, how could you do such a thing?"
"O my elder brothers," he lamented, "if it is true that I desired
this girl, yet have I never met her. Do you believe that I could be a
murderer? I know nothing about the murder. Tell me of it."
So he learned that, this very morning, Eternal Life on waking up had
been surprised by the silence of the house. From the ground-floor room
where she had passed the night, she had gone up to the story where her
parents slept, and had opened the door of their room. In front of the
bed, under the half-drawn curtains, the floor was a tarn of blood.
She was so frightened that she tumbled down the stairs and fell upon
the street door, sobbing and crying out.
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