Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/218

 walked off, accompanied by his confederates. Then Tsiu's two old friends, Shan and Yü, came up to him and asked him how he fared, saying, "Never mind the false accusation you are now suffering under; to-morrow we and all your neighbours will rally round you, and personally bear witness to your innocence." "May it indeed be so," said Tsiu; "then everything must come all right." Then his jailers turned round and bullied him, saying, "You condemned criminal, you, you do nothing but weep; don't you know you've got to walk?" So Tsiu restrained his tears, and entered his dungeon. All the neighbours brought him food and wine; but they could get no farther than the prison-doors, and the jailers, instead of giving it to the old man, kept it and gobbled it up themselves. At last night came on; and then it really seemed as though his woes had reached their crisis. He was made to lie down upon what was called the "prisoners' bed"—a diabolical contrivance on which all the prisoners were packed close together, and fitted up with heavy beams and ropes so disposed that each man lay under a crushing weight and tightly lashed to the ground; not a muscle could be moved, not a wrist or ankle turned; a living man was just as powerless as a corpse. "Alas, alas!" groaned Tsiu, in his bitterness, "I know not what fairy it was who restored my flowers; yet this wretch makes it an excuse for his persecutions. O fairy, dear fairy! if you have any pity for me, do for me what you did for my poor flowers, and save my life! Help me in this, and I will renounce all my family, give up the world, and enter the True Way!"

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he espied, in the dim distance, a faint advancing figure. It