It was necessary for him to push his way past the people to see. With his eyes wide open from emotion he suddenly understood what it was.
"Ai-ai-ai!" he exclaimed several times loudly and involuntarily.
A man had been buried alive in the earth up to his neck and the ground stamped in round his head. He was quite dead now. His head, which lolled to one side, and his glassy eyes showed that; the anguish had long passed. A little piece of paper, with one big character written in black on it, was stuck on a millet-stalk beside him.
For a full minute the boy gazed silently as the others were doing, awe-struck and yet utterly fascinated. For death is like that in the East; it seems to fascinate the people because of its unutterable finality.
"What is it—what does the writing say?" he inquired at last in a hoarse whisper, nudging the man next to him.
The man turned:
"The soldiers caught this one carrying a written message from the foreign devils and they buried him thus so that he might die."
Very pale, the boy waited before he spoke again.
"Has he been here long?" he inquired at last.
"Five days. Only this morning did the soldiers leave, being sure that he was dead."