Chinese Literature

their money. Later, after I got you, I never did much; and now I have changed my ways. But it worries me sometimes to think how I killed two men wrongly in the past and ruined two other innocent people. I’ve never told you about this before; but I would like to atone for my sins by having sutras chanted for their spirits, to get them out of hell.”

“How did you kill two men wrongly?” she asked.

“One was your husband. You remember how he charged at me in the forest, and I killed him. He was an old man and I had no grudge against him, but I killed him and took his wife. He can’t be resting easy in his grave.”

“But if not for that,” she said, ‘we wouldn’t be together now. Don’t worry over what’s past and done with. Who was the other?”

“It was even more wrong of me to kill the other man,” he said. “And two innocent people were involved who had to pay with their lives. It happened over a year ago. I had lost money in gambling and hadn’t a cent left, so I slipped out one night to see what I could pick up. I noticed a door that was not locked, and when I pushed in there was not a soul there; but in the inner room I found a man drunk in bed with a pile of cash by his feet. I took some of the money and was leaving, when the fellow woke up and started crying: ‘That cash was given me by my father-in-law to start a business. If you steal it, my whole family will starve.’ Then he rushed to the door and began to shout for help. Things were looking bad for me, when I saw an axe for chopping wood by my feet. In desperation, I picked up the axe, shouting: ‘It’s either you or me!’ I cut him down with two strokes, then went back to his room and took all the fifteen strings of cash. Later I heard that his concubine and a young man named Tsui Ning were wrongly accused of the robbery and murder and executed. Though I have been a bandit all my life, these two cases are the only ones that neither Heaven nor men could forgive; and I ought to sacrifice to the spirits of my victims.”

When Mrs. Liu heard this, she moaned to herself: ‘So my husband was killed by this beast too! And Second Sister and that young man were innocent after all! Come to think of it, I was wrong to insist that they pay with their lives: they will never forgive me in the nether regions.” She pretended, however, to be in the best of spirits, and said nothing.

The next day, she seized an opportunity to slip out, and went straight to the magistrate’s office to inform against her husband’s murderer. A new magistrate, who had taken up office only a fortnight before, was presiding over the court when the attendants took her in. When she came to the steps, she eried aloud. Then she denounced the bandit, describing how he had killed her husband Liu Kuei, how the magistrate had not investigated carefully because he was eager to close the case, how the concubine and Tsui Ning had forfeited their lives though they were innocent, and how later the bandit had killed her father’s old servant

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