But today the usurer came in with a poor farmer and the farmer was very frightened and ill at ease, and he threw himself before the magistrate with his face to the ground, and remained there speechless, begging for mercy. Then the usurer told his case and it was that he had loaned a sum of money to this farmer, and had accepted his land as security. This was two years ago, and now the money with its interest had mounted above the worth of the land.
“Yet in spite of this,” the usurer cried, and he pushed back his silken sleeves and moved his smooth hands and made his voice rich and reproachful, and he was very unctuous, “in spite of this, O honored magistrate, he will not move from his land!” And the man rolled his little eyes around in indignation at this wicked farmer.
But the farmer said nothing at all. He continued to kneel there with his face bent and leaning upon his two hands forked together. At last the old magistrate asked him,
“Why did you borrow and why do you not pay?”
Then the farmer looked up a little and he fixed his eyes on the magistrate’s footstool, and he continued to kneel, and he said anxiously,
“Sir, I am a very common man and poor, and I do not know how to speak to such as you, honored Sir. I am very common and I have never spoken to one higher than the head in our village, and I do not know how to speak here, and yet I have no one to speak for me, seeing that I am so poor.”
Then the old magistrate said kindly enough,
“You need not fear — only speak on.”
Then the farmer after opening his lips a time or two soundlessly began to speak, but still he did not lift his eyes at all, and it could be seen that his spare body was shivering in his patched and ragged clothes from which the old wadding stuck forth out of the holes like old sheep’s wool. His feet were bare and thrust only into shoes woven out of reeds and these had now fallen from his feet, so that his hard and horny toes rested stiffly upon the damp stone floor. But he did not seem to feel this, and he began in a weak voice and he said,
“Sir, I had a little land from my fathers. It is very poor land and it has never fed us full. But my parents died early and there were only I and my wife, and if we starved we did it and that was all. But she bore a child, a son, and then after years another, a girl. When they were little it was still not so hard. But they grew and we had to wed the son and his wife had a child. Sir, think of it, the land was not enough for my wife and me and now we have these. The girl was long too young to be wed and I had her to feed somehow. Two years ago I had a chance to betroth her to an old man in a village near us, for his wife was dead and he needed one to mend his household. But I had to give her a wedding garment. Sir, I had nothing so I borrowed a little money— only ten pieces of silver, to most men nothing, but to me very much and more than I had. I borrowed it from this usurer. In less than a year the ten pieces had grown into twenty of its own accord, for I had no more than the ten to spend. Now in two years it is forty. Sir, how can dead silver grow like that? There is only my land. He says go, but where shall I go? Let him come and drive me off, I say. There is nothing else than this.”
When the man had finished saying this he remained perfectly silent. Wang the Tiger stared at him and it was the strangest thing that he could not keep his eyes from the man’s feet. The farmer’s face was drawn and sallow and told of his life and of his never being full fed since he was born. But his feet told the whole tale. There was something eloquent in this man’s two bare feet, knotted and gnarled in the toes, and the soles like the dried hide of a water buffalo. Yes, looking at the man’s feet Wang the Tiger felt something welling up in him. Nevertheless, he waited to see what the old magistrate would say.
Now this usurer was a man of the town and well known and he had feasted with the magistrate many times and he kept the good will of the court with him because he paid silver to high and low in every case he had and he had many. The magistrate hesitated, therefore, although it could be seen he was somewhat moved, too. At last he turned to his chief councillor, a man near his own age but strong and straight for his years, and his face was smooth and handsome still, although his scanty whiskers that grew in three parts from his cheeks and chin were white. The magistrate asked this man,
“What do you say, my brother?”
This man smoothed his few white whiskers then and he said slowly as though he pondered justice, but the memory of silver was warm on his palm,
“It cannot be gainsaid that this farmer did borrow money and he has not returned it, and money borrowed must run into interest and this is according to the law. The usurer lives by his loaned moneys as a farmer does by his land. If the farmer rented his land out and received no rent he would complain and his complaint would be just. Yet this is only what the usurer has done. It is just, therefore, that he be paid his due.”
The old magistrate listened to this carefully, nodding his head from time to time, and it could be seen he was moved by it, too. But now suddenly the farmer lifted his eyes and for the first time he looked in a kind of daze from one face to the other. Yet Wang the Tiger did not see his face or how his eyes looked. He only saw the man’s two old bare feet curl upon each other in an agony, and suddenly he could not bear it. His immense anger rushed forth and he stood up. He clapped his hands together hard and he roared in a great voice,
“I say the poor man shall have his land!”
When all the people gathered in the court heard this roar come out of Wang the Tiger every head turned toward him, and the trusty men Wang the Tiger had, leaped to him and stood with their guns pointed fiercely and seeing them everyone shrank back and kept silent. But Wang the Tiger felt his anger released now and he could not stay it if he would and he pointed his finger at the usurer and stabbed it through the air again and again as he spoke and he shouted in a great voice, his black brows darting now up, now down above his eyes.
“Again and again have I seen this fat, biting insect here with some tale like this and he has greased his way in with silver to high and low! I am weary of him! Away with him!” And he turned to his guard and shouted, “After him with your guns!”
Now when the people heard this they thought Wang the Tiger had gone suddenly mad and everyone turned and ran for his life. Yes, and swiftest of all to run was the fat usurer and he reached the gate ahead of them all and he went through it with a squeak like a rat that barely escapes. He was so swift and he knew so well the winding alleys that although the trusty men pursued him he was gone and they could not find him, and when they had run so far they could only draw themselves up and look at each other with blank faces and pant awhile. And after they had looked a little more they went back through the hubbub that had risen now in the streets.
When they reached the court again there was an uproar indeed, for Wang the Tiger seeing what he had begun, grew reckless and he called his soldiers and cried out,
“Clear me these courts of everyone — all these cursed sucking worms and all their dirty women and children!”
And his soldiers fell with zest to doing what he said and the people ran out of the courts like rats from a burning house. Yes, in less than an hour there was not a soul there except Wang the Tiger and his own men, and in the magistrate’s own courts the old magistrate and his lady and their few personal servants. These Wang the Tiger had commanded were not to be touched.
When Wang the Tiger had done all this, and it had been done in such a burst of rage as he had seldom had in his life before, although he was given to such angers, too, he went into his own room and he sat down by the table and leaned on it and breathed heavily for a while. And he poured himself out some tea and drank it slowly. After a time he saw that he had set a pattern for himself this day that he must follow out somehow. But the more he thought the more he did not regret it, for now he felt free in his heart of all his despondency and gloom, and he felt light and brave and free and when his harelipped man stole in to see what he needed and his pocked lad brought in a jug of wine for him, he cried out to them, laughing his silent laugh as he did,