| The Wang brothers deliberate...: |
He was just about to leave, when two men came in to appeal to him, and he ordered them to approach for questioning. The first was called Wang Er, and he lived next door to Senior Licentiate Yan. In the third month of the previous year the Yan family's sucking pig had strayed into the Wangs' yard, but the Wangs had returned it immediately. Yan said, “To take a pig back like this means very bad luck.” He forced the Wangs to buy it for eighty cents of silver. They had fattened it up till it weighed over a hundred catties, when it wandered into the Yans' yard by mistake. The Yan family shut it up, and when Wang's elder brother went to ask for it, Senior Licentiate Yan said, “It's my pig, and if you want it you must pay me the market price for it.” Wang was a poor man—how could he find the money? But when he started to argue, Yan's sons took the bolt of the door and a rolling-pin and beat him within an inch of his life. He was lying at home now with a broken leg, so his younger brother had come to lodge a complaint. |
