for this favor, and I welcomed the granting of it as a solitary gleam
of mercy, but I was informed that the mitigation of the sentence came
about through bribery on the part of the man's relatives, who had to
buy the good-will of four officials before the petition could reach
the magistrate's hands.

More than an hour and a half had passed since we entered, and for two
hours before that the four chained prisoners had been undergoing the
torture of kneeling on a coarsely sanded stone in an immovable and
unsupported position. I was standing so close to them that the dress of
one touched my feet. I could hear their breathing, which had been heavy
at first, become a series of gasps, and cool as the afternoon was, the
sweat of pain fell from their brows upon the dusty floor, and they were
so emaciated that, even through their clothing, I could see the
outlines of their bones. There were no counsel, and no witnesses, and
the judge asked but one question as he beat his foot impatiently on the
floor, "Are you guilty?" They were accused of an aggravated robbery,
and were told to confess, but they said that only two of them were
guilty. They were then sent back to the tender mercies of the
opium-smoking jailer, probably to come back again and again to undergo
the severer forms of torture, till no more money can be squeezed out of
their friends, when they will probably be beheaded, death being the
legal penalty for robbery with aggravations.

There is no regular legal process, no jury, no one admitted to plead
for the accused, and owing to the way in which accusations are made and
the intimate association of trial with bribery, it is as certain that
many innocent persons suffer as it is that many guilty escape. From
such a system one is compelled to fall back upon the righteousness of
the Judge of all the earth; and as I stood in that hideous