The Patriot by Pearl S. Buck

I. And as I watched them go out to be killed I grew so full of hatred towards those who ordered their death that I swore I would revenge them if I escaped. When you came, I was already a determined revolutionist. Then I talked no more with anyone. When new ones came in I was silent. The cell grew used and filthy. But I cared for nothing. I could not sleep. Each night I, too, only waited for the dawn. Then when the cell was still dark, there would be a rattle of a key in the lock, and a round cylinder of light would be shot into our darkness. And a rough voice would call out the names one after the other of everyone—of everyone, that is, except me. Day after day I waited, sweating, my heart tight, for my name. But it was never called. I was only forgotten.
    “The cylinder of light was fastened upon one miserable creature after another. They were nearly always crying as the soldiers handcuffed them one to the other. Then they were marched down a corridor. Only I was left, and there I always stood watching them go, knowing where they went. I imagined them always, every day, crowding down the corridor, feeling the air suddenly fresh on their faces as I had not felt it in many days. But it was still dark. In the darkness hands they could not see would push them, jostling them against a hard wall. There would be a shout, a noise, a flash before their eyes. They would fall, huddled.
    “An English sentence kept springing out of my brain. ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud—’ I longed to cry out to them, to tell them something. But no one even knew what became of them. Day after day I died with them, forgotten, until you came one day with the new ones, and with you I was found.”
    I-wan, reading these pages far into the night, over and over again, could not burn them. These things En-lan had put down were a precious record. He folded the pages and put them away in his drawer, underneath some old books which his grandfather had given him and which he never read. But he could never put away what he had read. En-lan had given him a part of himself. What could he give in return? He lay awake thinking what he could give to En-lan, and he could think of nothing worthy in return, except his own blood, sworn to brotherhood.
    When he saw En-lan the next day he did not speak of what he had read. He saw En-lan was now shy, having told him much. So without speaking of it he asked him, “Will you be my blood brother?”
    At this the shyness went out of En-lan’s look, and he answered, “Yes, I will.”
    Then they went to En-lan’s room and after the old rite of blood brotherhood, they drew blood from their arms and mingled it together, and clasped their hands and took the vow. And though neither ever talked of it, the vow remained between them.
    This was how En-lan had become a secret revolutionist and I-wan with him, so that they met with these others in a deserted classroom when school was over each day…. He came out of his thoughts in this meeting to hear En-lan say, as he now stood up before them all, “We have been given the task of organizing the district of the silk mills in the northern part of the city. These are the mills for which we are responsible.”
    He read a list of names, one after the other. I-wan had only heard of them. He had never in his whole life been into those parts of Shanghai where thousands of men and women and children worked in the silk mills.
    “You, I-wan,” En-lan said, “must take the furthest section, the Ta Tuan mill, since you can hire a ricksha and need not go on foot. Those who must go on foot may take the nearer places.”
    And En-lan went on to tell them how the revolution must now be taken into the factories, so that the people who worked there might understand and prepare for the day when the government would be overthrown, and a new rule set up, the rule of the people for themselves. It was, as En-lan showed it, a true and right plan. I-wan thought of the villages in En-lan’s