Free Sons by Pearl S. Buck

some state army or other somewhere and demand to be pardoned and received into the state again.
    But it was against his stomach to be a robber, too, for his father had been an honest man and not such a man as falls easily into robbery in any famine or time of war, and Wang the Third might have struggled on for more years yet and waited for a chance, for now he had dreamed so long that it had come to be a certainty in him that heaven itself had marked out his destiny for him even as he dreamed and he had but to wait until his hour came and he could seize it.
    The one thing which made it well-nigh impossible for him to wait, for he was not a man of patient temper, was that his soul had come to loathe this southern country where he lived and he longed to be out of it and away to his own north. He was a man of the north and there were days when he could scarcely swallow one more time the endless white rice these southerners loved and he longed to set his great hard white teeth into a stiff sheet of unleavened wheaten bread rolled about a garlic stalk. Yes, he made his own voice harsher and louder even than its nature was because he hated so heartily the smooth oiled courtesies of these southern men, who were so smooth they must be tricky since it is against nature to be always gentle, and he thought all clever men must have hollow hearts. Yes, he scowled at them often and was angry with them often because he longed to be in his own country again where men grew tall as men ought to be and not little apes as these southerners were, and where men’s speech was scant and plain and their hearts stern and straight. And because Wang the Third had so evil a temper men were afraid of him and they feared his black brows’ frowning and his surly mouth and because of these and his white long teeth, they made a nickname for him and they called him Wang the Tiger.
    Often in the night in the small room he had for his own Wang the Tiger would roll upon his hard and narrow bed and seek for a plan and a way to do what he dreamed. Well he knew if his old father died he would have his inheritance. But his father would not die, and gnashing his teeth Wang the Tiger muttered often into the night,
    “The old man will live clean through my own prime and it will be too late for me to grow great if he does not die soon! How perverse an old man is he that he will not die!”
    So at last in this spring he had come to the place where, however unwilling he was to do it, yet he had made up his mind he must turn robber rather than wait on and scarcely had he made up his mind when the news came of his father’s dying.…Now having this news he walked back across the fields, his heart swelling and pounding in his bosom because he saw the way that was set out before him clear and plain for him to follow, and it was so great a comfort he need not be a robber that he could have shouted had he not been so silent a man by nature. Yes, far above every other thought was this; he had not been mistaken in his destiny and with his inheritance he would have all he needed, and heaven guarded him. Yes, far above every other thought was this; now he could take the first step out upon that upward and endless road of his destiny, for he knew he was destined to be great.
    But none saw this exultation upon his face. None ever saw anything upon that fierce changeless face of his; his mother had given to him her steadfast eye and her firm mouth and her look of something rocklike in the very substance of which his flesh was made. He said nothing therefore but he went to his room and prepared himself for the long journey north, and he told off four trusty men whom he commanded to come with him. When his scanty preparations were made, he marched to the great old house in that city which the general had taken for his own use and he sent a guard in to announce him, and the guard came back and called out that he was to enter. Then Wang the Tiger marched in, bidding his men wait at the