were bent on chewing things beyond his flesh. Those eyes kept following at a distance, never coming near nor withdrawing; they seemed to be joined in an unbroken string and were already there on the spot, chewing his very soul.
"Help!"
In reality, Ah Q had not opened his mouth; his eyes had long gone black. The sound of bullets whizzed through his ears; his whole body seemed to fly asunder like so much light dust. Ah Q was no more.
The immediate result of this execution was that Chü-jen Lao-yeh received the hardest blow, because in the end the booty had not been recovered. His whole family wailed loudly. The next to feel misfortune was the Chao family. It was not only that the Hsiu-t'sai, while going to the city to report a case, had had his queue severed by some wicked Revolutionists, but he had also been coerced into giving them twenty dollars as payment for his freedom; so the whole family wailed aloud, and from that day on, they created about themselves an atmosphere suggestive of the surviving adherents of a former dynasty.
As for public opinion, there was no divergence of opinion in Weichuang; they naturally agreed that Ah Q was bad; the fact that he had been shot was proof of his badness, for if he were not
