Hsiang-lien raised his fist and struck him.
"I'll drink it, I'll drink it!" quickly bawled Hsüeh P'an.
So saying, he felt obliged to lower his head to the very roots of the reeds and drink a mouthful. Before he had had time to swallow it, a sound of 'ai' became audible, and up came all the stuff he had put into his mouth only a few seconds back.
"You filthy thing!" exclaimed Hsiang-lien. "Be quick and finish drinking; and I'll let you off."
Upon hearing this, Hsüeh P'an bumped his head repeatedly on the ground. "Do please," he cried, "lay up a store of meritorious acts for yourself and let me off! I couldn't take that were I even on the verge of death!"
"This kind of stench will suffocate me!" Hsiang-lien observed, and, with this remark, he abandoned Hsüeh Pan to his own devices; and, pulling his horse, he put his foot to the stirrup, and rode away.
Hsüeh Pan, meanwhile, became aware of his departure, and felt at last relieved in his mind. Yet his conscience pricked him for he saw that he should not misjudge people. He then made an effort to raise himself, but the racking torture he experienced all over his limbs was so sharp that he could with difficulty bear it.
Chia Chen and the other guests present at the banquet became, as it happened, suddenly alive to the fact that the two young fellows had disappeared; but though they extended their search everywhere, they saw nothing of them. Some one insinuated, in an uncertain way, that they had gone outside the northern gate; but as Hsüeh P'an's pages had ever lived in dread of him, who of them had the audacity to go and hunt him up after the injunctions, he had given them, that they were not to follow him? But waxing solicitous on his account, Chia Chen subsequently bade Chia Jung take a few servant-boys and go and discover some clue of him, or institute inquiries as to his whereabouts. Straightway therefore they prosecuted their search beyond the northern gate, to a distance of two li below the bridge, and it was quite by accident that they discerned Hsüeh P'an's horse made fast by the side of a pit full of reeds.
"That's a good sign!" they with one voice exclaimed; "for if the horse is there, the master must be there too!"
In a body, they thronged round the horse, when, from among the reeds, they caught the sound of human groans, so hurriedly rushing forward to ascertain for themselves, they, at a glance, perceived Hsüeh P'an, his costume all in tatters, his countenance and eyes so swollen and bruised that it was hard to make out the head and face, and his whole person, inside as well as outside his clothes, rolled like a sow in a heap of mud.