They brought in the wu-tso, the Inspector of Corpses, and also his assistant, to verify the death and to help in hearsing her. The keeper of the family graveyard and his brother, the two Chang, were also there to assist in the mournful work.
The time came for the funeral, and the procession went forth from the town. The coffin was placed in a brick tomb, and the first shovels of earth were thrown upon it. Then all returned home. Three feet of cold insensitive earth covered the body of this young beauty, and it had been full of love.
Now the Inspector of Corpses had a worthless fellow named Feng for his assistant. This miserable boy, on coming back from the cemetery in the evening, said to his mother: "An excellent day's work! Tomorrow we shall be rich."
"And what successful stroke of business have you concluded?"
"Today we buried the daughter of Chou, and all her jewels were put in the coffin with her. Instead of leaving them to enrich the earth, would it not be better to take them?"
"Think before you do such a terrible thing!" his mother begged. "This is no matter of a mere whipping. Your father wanted to do the same thing twenty years ago. He opened a coffin, and the corpse began to smile at him. Your father died of that in four or five days. My son, do not do it. It is no easy matter."
"Mother," he answered simply, "my mind is made up. Do not waste your breath on me, for that is useless."
He bent over his bed, and took out of it a heavy iron tool.
"O mother, not each person's destiny is the same. I have consulted soothsayers, and they have told me that I shall become rich this year."
He took also an axe, a leather sack, and a dark lantern, which he placed in readiness. Finally he wrapped himself in a great mantle of reeds, for it was the eleventh moon and the snow had begun to fall. He made a sort of hurdle with about ten inter-crossed bamboos, and fastened it behind his mantle, so that it should drag along the ground and efface his foot-prints.