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.

The second watch was sounding when he went out, and all was still bustle and gaiety in the town.  But beyond the walls both silence and solitude reigned in the growing cold.  The snow was already thick.  Who would have ventured out there?

From time to time he turned his head, but no one followed him.  At last he reached the wall of the family graveyard and climbed in.  Suddenly a dog ran through the tall grass and leaped at him, barking.  The thief had prepared a portion of poisoned meat, and threw it to the dog.  The beast, being badly fed, smelt it and swallowed it.  He still barked a little, but the venom was potent, and he very soon writhed on the ground.

In the keeper’s hut, young Chang said to his elder brother: 

“The dog has started barking, and then has stopped.  Is that not strange?  Perhaps it is a thief.  You ought to go and see.”

The elder brother rose from his hot bed and took up a weapon, grumbling.  Then he opened the door and went out.  But he was seized by a whirl of cold snow, and called to the dog:  “What are you barking for, O animal of the Gods?”