red 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. Neighbors heard her and ran
up, and she said to them:

"Yesterday, my parents went up to their room. I do not know who has
killed them both."

The bolder ones went up the stairs to see. They opened the
bed-curtains, and there were the man and his wife, stiff and with
their throats cut across. They looked to right and left. The window
was shut, and nothing was disturbed.

"It is a serious matter," they muttered. "Let us not act hastily."

One of them went at once to warn the district chief of police, who
came and examined the scene of the crime. He shut and sealed the
house, and led Eternal Life to the Governor's Court. The girl knelt
down and told all that she knew, and the Governor said:

"If the door and windows were closed, and nothing has been stolen, the
matter is dubious. Had your father an enemy?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"That is strange!" murmured the Governor, and thought for a moment.

Suddenly he told the officers to take off the silken veil with which
the young girl had half-covered her head. He could then see her
exceptional beauty.

"How old are you? Are you