Just then Chang perceived that the young girl was kneeling close to him. Bewildered and not knowing what to do, he turned to Eternal Life and asked: "How can you say that I have been intimate with you? With what object are you trying to encompass my ruin?" She sobbed without answering. Meanwhile the Governor called upon the officers to apply the buskin of torture to the young man. And they swarmed about him like ants. Unhappily for him, Chang Loyalty had been brought up in muslin and gauze, and had grown to manhood in a brocade. How could he endure such torture? Hardly had he felt the pressure of the buskin before he cried: "I confess everything!" The Governor had a brush and paper given to the accused, that he might himself write out his confession. The unhappy man wept, saying: "What must I write? I know nothing of the matter!" Then he turned to the young girl and added: "Do you at least tell me what you have done, so that I may write my confession." Eternal Life answered 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."