them, took a candle holder and a partially used four-ounce candle. The last he took home, lighted, and lay down utterly alone in his little room. He could not express the joyous novelty that he felt. The candle flame sparkled and danced as if it were New Year's Eve. His musings mounted with animated pace, after this fashion:
"Revolt! How interesting . . . along will come the Revolutionary party, clad in white helmets and white armor, holding flat knives, metal flails, bombs, foreign guns, three-pointed and double-edged knives, and spears with hoops. They will pass T'uku Temple, calling, 'Ah Q, come with us, come with us!' Thus I will go along with them . . .
"Then how laughable the whole bunch of Weichuangites, men and women, will be, kneeling and beseeching, 'Spare our lives, Ah Q!' And who will listen to them! The first to deserve death are Little D and the Venerable Mr. Chao, also the Hsiu-t'sai and the "False Foreigner" . . . will I spare a few lives? Wang-hu might be saved . . . but even he is not wanted.
"Creature . . . go and open that box at once: silver ingots, foreign coins, foreign cloth . . . first of all move the Hsiu-t'sai's wife's Ningpo bed to T'uku Temple; besides, bring along the chairs and tables of the Chin family, . . . perhaps, those of the Chao family will do. I myself will not lift a hand;
