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sewed, I sold easily and the pawnshop keeper gave me a fair price. With this I bought myself the blue cotton uniforms, such as many of the students wore who liked to be patriotic. I wore one when I went to prison.
    “You asked me, I-wan, how I came to be in prison. It is a simple story. One day soldiers came into our English classroom and they shouted my name. I was reading a poem by an English poet. I could not understand it very well, but I felt through the dimness of foreign words that there was beauty. It began, ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud—’
    “I had been studying English for three years. At home in the village they all crowded around me in the summer evenings and begged me, ‘Speak some English for us to hear!’ So I would say slowly and clearly, ‘My name is Liu En-lan. How do you do. I am very well, thank you.’ Everyone listened in silence, and when I stopped they burst into laughter and they laughed until tears ran down their cheeks. ‘It sounds like hens cackling,’ they said. ‘Now tell us what it means.’ And they listened again while I told them, admiring me for all I knew.
    “And my old uncle, Liu Ih, the oldest man in the village, always nodded his head and sucked his pipe and said, ‘I knew we made no mistake when we let him go to school. No one from this village has ever gone to school, but times are changed. He will bring honor to us all. He will get a fine government job with all this English and pay us all back—with interest.’ ‘Yes, I will,’ I always promised. I gazed around at their faces, and I loved them greatly as they looked at me, their eyes innocent and wistful in their lined dark faces. At their feet stood little children, staring at me in wonder and in silence, to whom I knew I was a hero. When I was graduated with honors, I would get the fine job and do everything for them. I would hire a good teacher and all the children should go to school….
    “So that morning I had been reading through the foreign words toward that beauty, ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud.’ … Miss Maitland was saying slowly, ‘This is a poem by a great English poet, whose name was Wordsworth.’
    “At this moment something struck the door and we all looked toward it. It was a flimsy door, and it burst open at once, as indeed you know it does, even in a little wind. How then could it withstand the blow of a gun? Soldiers stood there, at least twenty of them, and one shouted, ‘Where is Liu En-lan?’
    “When I heard my name I stood up at once. No one said anything.
    “‘Are you Liu En-lan?’ the sergeant shouted.
    “‘Yes, I am,’ I answered quietly, though I was very much astonished.
    “‘You are under arrest!’ the sergeant roared. ‘Come with us!’
    “‘But why—why—’ I stammered, and could not talk. I could not imagine why I was arrested, nor indeed that even my name was known except to my teachers and a very few of my fellow students. ‘I think there is a mistake,’ I said to the sergeant.
    “‘No mistake!’ cried the sergeant. ‘Liu En-lan of the Liu village in the province of Shensi!’
    “‘That is certainly I and that is my village,’ I replied, ‘but why should I be arrested?’
    “At this the sergeant grew very red in the face. ‘You dare to talk to me!’ he bellowed, and rushing to me he seized me by the collar and jerked me off my feet. I felt to my horror that my collar was torn and I would have to buy a new coat. But I had no time for anything more than the bare thought, because the sergeant was a large man and very angry. He shook me and shouted, ‘You dare—you dare!’ I wanted to fight back, but I knew it would be foolish, with all the guns of the soldiers pointed at me.
    “At this Miss Maitland grew very angry. You know her small mild face, under her parted white hair—it is always gentle and proper. None of us had ever seen it otherwise. But suddenly she flew at the sergeant and grasped his arm and shook it.
    “‘You stop behaving