And when the lad was still silent, he coaxed again, and he said, “Tell your old father why you want to be a soldier?” And the lad said suddenly, and his eyes were alight under his brows, “There is to be a war such as we have not heard of—there is to be a revolution and fighting and war such as never was, and our land is to be free!” Wang Lung listened to this in the greatest astonishment he had yet had from his three sons. “Now what all this stuff is, I do not know,” he said wondering. “Our land is free already—all our good land is free. I rent it to whom I will and it brings me silver and
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