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they must ask some worthy man among their neighbors to come in to divide the inheritance before an assembly of honest and good citizens. And as they talked together one evening as to who this should be, Wang the Second said,
    “There is none nearer us and more to be trusted, my elder brother, than Liu, the grain merchant, under whom I had my apprenticeship as a clerk, and whose daughter is your lady. Let us ask him to divide our inheritance, for he is a man whom all hold just, and rich enough so that he will not be envious for himself.”
    When Wang the Eldest heard this he was displeased secretly because he had not thought of it first and he answered weightily,
    “I wish you would not be so quick to speak, brother, because I was just about to say let us invite the father of the mother of my sons to do it for us. But since you have said it, let it be and we will ask him. Nevertheless, I was just on the point of saying so myself, and you are always too quick and speaking out of your place in the family.”
    At this rebuke the elder brother stared hard at Wang the Second and breathed heavily with his thick lips pursed, and Wang the Second drew his mouth down as though he could have laughed but did not. Then Wang the Eldest looked away hastily and he said to his younger brother,
    “And how does it seem to you, my little younger brother?”
    But Wang the Third looked up in his haughty half-dreaming way, and he said,
    “It is nothing to me! But whatever you do, do it quickly.”
    Wang the Eldest rose then as though he would make all haste, although as he came into these middle years of his life he could not make haste without confusion, and if he even walked quickly his feet and hands seemed too many for him.
    But the matter was arranged at last and Liu the merchant was willing, for he had respected Wang Lung for a shrewd man. The brothers invited also such of the neighbors as were high enough for them and they invited certain high men of the town who were both rich and stable in their position, and these men gathered on the appointed day in the great hall of Wang Lung’s house, and each took his seat according to his rank.
    Then Wang the Second, when Liu the merchant called upon him to give an account of all the lands and moneys to be divided, rose and gave the paper on which all was written into the hands of Wang the Eldest and Wang the Eldest gave it to Liu the merchant and Liu received it. First he opened it and put his great brass spectacles across his nose and he muttered the account over to himself, and they all waited in silence until he had done. Then he read it over again aloud, so that all the men sitting there in that great hall knew that Wang Lung when he died had been lord over a mighty number of acres of land, in all more than eight hundred acres, and seldom had anyone in those parts ever heard of so much going under the name of one man and scarcely under one family, even, and surely not under any since the time of the great Hwang family’s height. Wang the Second knew it all, and he would not look surprised, but the others could not but let their wonder leak out, however much they held their faces straight and calm for propriety. Only Wang the Third seemed not to care and he sat as he always did, as though his mind were elsewhere and he were waiting impatiently for this to be done and over so that he might go away where his heart was.
    Besides all this land there were the two houses which were Wang Lung’s, the farm house in the fields and this great old town house that he bought from the dying lord of the House of Hwang, when that house had fallen into decay and its sons scattered. And besides houses and lands, there were sums of money lent here and there and sums of money in the grain business and there were bags of money lying idle and hidden, so that the money itself was half as much as the value of the lands.
    But there were certain claims to be decided before all this inheritance could be divided