The unjust sentence from the Chinese. Mister Chu was a native of Young Coo,
and as a young man, was much given to playing tricks and talking
in a loose kind of way. Having lost his wife, he went off
to ask certain old woman to arrange another match for him, and on the
way he chanced to fall in with a neighbor's wife, who took his fancy
very much, so he said, in a joke to the old woman,
get me that stylish looking handsome lady, and I shall be quite satisfied.
I'll see what I can do, replied the old woman, also joking if
you managed to kill her present husband, upon which Chu laughed and said he
would certainly do so. Now. About a month afterwards, the said husband,
who had gone out to collect some money due to him, was actually
killed in a lonely spot, and the magistrate of the district immediately summoned the
neighbors and beadle and held the usual inquest, but was unable to find any
clue to the murderer. However, the old woman told the story of her
conversation with Jo, and suspicion at once fell upon him. The constables came
and arrested him but he stoutly denied the charge, and the magistrate now began
to suspect the wife of the murdered man. Accordingly, she was severely beaten
and tortured in several ways until her strength failed her, and she falsely acknowledged
her guilt. Note by Herbert A. Giles translator. Such has doubtless been
the occasional result of torture in China. But the singular keenness of the mandarins
as a body in recognizing the innocent and detecting the guilty, that is,
when their own averaragous interests are not involved, makes this contingency so rare as
to be almost unknown. A good instance came under my own notice at Suotteau
in eighteen seventy six. For years a Chinese servant had been employed at the
Foreign Custom House to carry a certain summer money every week to the bank,
and at length his honesty was about suspicion. On the occasion to which I
allude, he had been sent as usual with a bag of dollars, but
after a short absence he rushed back with a frightful gash on his right arm,
evidently inflicted by a heavy chopper, and laying the bone bear the money
was gone. He said he had been invited into a tea house by a
couple of soldiers, whom he could point out that they had tried to wrest
the bag from him, and that at length one of them seized the shopper
and inflicted so severe a wound on his arm that, in his agony,
he dropped the money, and the soldiers made off with it. The latter
were promptly arrested and confronted with their accuser, but with almost indecent haste,
the police magistrate dismissed the case against them and declared that he believed the man
had made away with the money and inflict the wound on himself, And so
it turned out to be under overwhelming evidence, this servant of prude fidelity had
given way to a rash hope of making a little money at the gambling table,
had hurried into one of these halls and lost everything in three stakes,
had wounded himself on the right arm. He was a left handed man,
and had concocted the story of the soldiers all within the space of about twenty
five minutes. When he saw that he was detected, he confessed everything without
hiving received a single blow of the bamboo, but up to the moment of
his confession, the foreign feeling against that police magistrate was undeniably strong en Note.
Chue was then examined, and he said, this delicate woman could not
bear the agony of your tortures, which she has stated is untrue. And
even should he wrong, escape the notice of the gods. For her to
die in this way with the stain upon her name is more than I can
endure. I will tell the whole truth. I killed the husband that I
might secure the wife. She knew nothing at all about it, And when
the magistrate asked for some proof, Chew said his bloody clothes would be evidence
enough. But when they center search his house, no bloody clothes were forthcoming.
He was then beaten to the fainted, Yet when he came round he
still stuck to what he said. It is my mother, cried he who
will not sign the death warrant of his son. Let me go myself and
I will get the clothes. So he was escorted by a guard to his
home, and there he explained to his mother that whether she gave up or
withheld the clothes, it was all the same that in either case, he
would have to die, and it was better to die early than late.
Thereupon his mother wept bitterly, and going into the bedroom, brought out of
the short delay that he quiet clothes, which were taken at once to the
magistrates. There was now no doubt as to the truth of Cheo's story,
and as nothing occurred to change the magistrate's opinion, thrown into prison to await
the day for his execution. Meanwhile, as the magistrate was one day inspecting
his jail, suddenly a man appeared in the hall who glared at him fiercely
and roared out dull headed, fool, unfit to be the guardian of the
people's interests. Whereupon the crowd of servants standing around rushed forward to seize him,
but with one sweep of his arms he laid them all flat on the
ground. The magistrate was frightened out of his wits and tried to escape,
but the man cried out to him, I am one of Quanti's lieutenants.
If you move one inch, you are lost. So the magistrates stood there,
shaking from head to foot with fear, while his visitor continued the murderer
is Kumpiao Chiu had nothing to do with it. The lieutenant then fell down
on the ground and was to all appearance lifeless. However, after a while
he recovered his face, having quite shack changed, and when they asked him
his name, lo it was coom Pial. Under the application of the bamboo,
he confessed his guilt. Always an unprincipled man, he had heard that
the murdered man was going out to collect money, and, thinking he would
be sure to bring it back with him, he had killed him but found
nothing. Then, when he learned that Jew had acknowledged the crime as his
own doing, he had rejoiced in secreted such a stroke of luck. How
he had got into the magistrate's hall, he was quite unable to say.
The magistrate now called for some explanation of Chew's bloody clothes, which Chew himself
was unable to give. But his mother, who was at once sent for,
stated that she had cut her own arm to stain them, and when
they examined her, they found on her left arm the scar of a recent
wound. The magistrate was lost in amazement, and all this unfortunately for him,
the reversal of his sentence cost him his appointment, and he died in
poverty, unable to find his way home. As for true, the widow
of the murdered man married him in the following year out of gratitude for his
noble behavior.