“That,” lying dead there, with his head Heaven only knew where, was his son!  He had been a nobleman; that one could see at a glance, but was poor now, “cashless,” having spent his fortune in his efforts to bribe the officials to let his son be released.  His money had come to an end, and there his son lay dead.  The risk he was running, he well knew, was very great, in thus coming to remove the body of the one he loved.  Were the officials only to know that he had visited the spot, he would straightway be imprisoned, accused of complicity, tortured, and then put to death; notwithstanding this, however, he felt sure that darkness would protect him, and so in his anxiety he had come to remove his son’s body, that he might during the night bury it on one of the distant hills.  He had given the coolies the little money he had to help him in his enterprise, and now that he was only a few yards from his beloved he could not get them to proceed.  He was himself too weak to move the body.

I took him by the arm, and we approached the bodies.  The near view of them made him shudder and turn pale, and as he rested on my arm he was shivering all over.  Not a word did he utter, not a lamentation did he make, not a tear did he shed; for, to show one’s feelings is considered bad form in the land of Cho-sen.  I could well see, however, that his heart was aching.  He bent over the bodies, one after the other; then, after a lengthy examination, he pointed to one, and murmured: 

“This is my son, this is my son!  I know him by his hands.  See how they are swollen, and nearly cut by the rope?”

Next, after a good deal of uncertainty, for the face was smeared and streaked with blood, we found the head pertaining to the body.  The old man, with paternal love, then proceeded, if he could, to stick the head on the body again, but—­this was impossible.

“Please, sir,” he begged of me, in a tone of lamentation, “help me to take my son as far as the coffin.”

I consented, and, with the utmost trouble, we carried the body down the hill, afterwards coming back for the head.  In two mats, which had been carried inside the hearse, we wrapped the corpse up as well as we could, and then bundled him into the coffin.  All this time a careful look-out was maintained, to see that no one else was about to spy over the deed, but once the corpse was in its coffin, the coolies quickly took the hearse on their shoulders, and all sped away, not without repeated “kamapsos” (thanks) being given me by the old man.

That was the only body which was removed, all the others being left to rot or to be eaten up by wild animals.