In the district of Fu-an in the province of Fukien lived a man named Lei Fa-long. One day the January before last his wife was out on the hillside cutting grass for fuel. A younger cousin of her husband chanced to meet her, and then and there seduced her, The offence was repeated on several occasions afterwards, but the man made no presents to the woman. In the following December the husband happened to find the cousin in his house talking and laughing with his wife. His suspicions being aroused he made her confess the truth, after which he frequently used to beat her, besides forbidding her ever to speak to the cousin again. Infatuated by her unlawful passion and rendered desperate by her husband's treatment of her, she conceived the idea of taking her husband's life, and secretly made her lover promise to help if ever an opportunity offered. A month later she was again cutting grass, when the cousin came up and sat down to talk with her. Suddenly the violently. ug round and finding that husband appeared and begun to abuse her no one was in sight, she got up, glided, behind her husband and ped him round his struggles to free himself he fell down, upon which she attacked hit with her grass-cutter's knife. The ce then took the knife from her and cut him on the head, inflicting only a slight wound. The woman, seeing that her lover's arm was nerveless, got back the weapon and cut her husband's throat with it, killing him on the spot. Just at the moment another man, a relative of the parties, came up, but he was too late to prevent the murder. The guilty couple then made off in Gifforent directions. They were afterwards arrested and convicted of the crime. The woman has been condemned to slow degrees, which is the pun jotted by the law to her crime. has been sentenced to be decay mediately, with the addition, on account of the victim's being an elder relation, that he be branded before death and his head exposed afterwards.—Referred to the Board of Punishments for a report without delay.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.