One night after this Erh-ch'êng's father appeared to him in a dream, and reproached him, saying, "Unfilial son, unfraternal brother, your hour is at hand. Wherefore usurp rights that do not belong to you?" In the morning Erh-ch'êng told Tsang-ku of his dream, and proposed to return the property to his brother; but she only laughed at him for a fool. Just then the eldest of his two sons, a boy of seven, died of small-pox, and this frightened Tsang-ku so that she agreed to restore the deeds. Ta-ch'êng would not accept them; and now the second child, a boy of three, died also; whereupon Tsang-ku seized the deeds, and threw them into her brother-in-law's house. Spring was over, but the land was in a terribly neglected state; so Ta-ch'êng set to work and put it in order again. From this moment Tsang-ku was a changed woman towards her mother- and sister-in-law; and when, six months later, Mrs. An died, she was so grieved that she refused to take any nourishment. "Alas!" cried she, "that my mother-in-law has died thus early, and prevented me from waiting upon her. Heaven will not allow me to retrieve my past errors." Tsang-ku had thirteen children,[309] but as none of them lived, they were obliged to adopt one of Ta-ch'êng's,[310] who, with his wife, lived to a good old age, and had three sons, two of whom took their doctor's degree. People said this was a reward for filial piety and brotherly love.
[304] Such is the Chinese idiom for what we should call "bitter" tears. This phrase is constantly employed in the notices of the death of a parent sent round to friends and relatives.
[305] A disgraceful state of things, in the eyes of the Chinese. See the paraphrase of the _Sacred Edict_, Maxim 1.
[306] An illegal form of punishment, under the present dynasty, which authorizes only _bambooing_ of two kinds, each of five degrees of severity; _banishment_, of three degrees of duration; _transportation_ for life, of three degrees of distance; and _death_, of two kinds, namely, by strangulation and decapitation. That torture is occasionally resorted to by the officers of the Chinese Empire is an indisputable fact; that it is commonly employed by the whole body of mandarins could only be averred by those who have not had the opportunities or the desire to discover the actual truth.