The demon, with artful words and flowering speech, all false feeling and feigned sincerity, replied: "My sovereign, from my youth your humble servant loved to practise bow and horse, and lived by the hunt.

The narrator labels the lie before it starts, so nobody in the audience is taken in even briefly: 巧語花言, clever words and flowery speech, and 虛情假意, false feeling and counterfeit sincerity. Both are still current. In 自幼兒 the colloquial 兒 is er; 採獵為生, to live by hunting, takes 為 as wéi. 那 is the pointing nà.

Some thirteen years ago, leading a few dozen household boys, loosing the hawks and coursing the hounds, I suddenly saw a fierce, brindled tiger, a woman borne upon its back, making down the mountain slope.

And here is the tiger, introduced thirteen years and several hundred miles from anywhere it can be checked. 數十, some tens, several dozen, takes 數 as shù; in 身馱著, carrying on its back, the 著 is zhe. 斑斕猛虎 is a brindled, fierce tiger — a phrase to remember, because the chapter will use it again of somebody else. 那 is pointing nà.

It was your servant who drew the bow and, with a single arrow, shot the fierce tiger down; I bore the woman up to my own manor, revived her with warm water and warm broth, and saved her life.

兜弓 is to draw a bow taut; 射倒, shot down, takes 倒 as dǎo; in 將女子帶上 the 將 that marks what is being carried is jiāng. The whole rescue is invented, and it converts an abduction into an act of gallantry in a single sentence.

When I asked from what household she came, she never once let fall the two words "royal princess."

Here again 那裡 means "where, from what place," so 那 is the question-word nǎ. 更不曾, "never even once," takes 更 as gèng. The lie is carefully built to excuse him: he could not have known who she was.

Had she but said she was Your Majesty's Third Princess, how should I have dared, against all conscience, to wed her without leave?

欺心 is to deceive your own heart, to act against conscience; 擅自 is on your own authority, without leave. He is now performing the scruples of a loyal subject, which is a considerable piece of nerve.

I should surely have delivered her up to the golden hall, and begged some office, great or small, to bring me honor.

當得, "ought to, would surely," takes 得 as dé; 榮身 is to bring honour to one's person. He paints himself as a man who would have done the correct and mildly ambitious thing.

It was only because she said she was a commoner's daughter that your servant kept her at the manor.

民家之女, a daughter of a common household. The fiction now has an innocent motive for what was in fact a kidnapping and a forced marriage.

The maiden fair, the man of parts, and both of one willing mind — and so we have been matched these many years.

女貌郎才 — the woman's beauty, the man's talent — is the stock phrase for a well-matched couple, the Ming equivalent of "made for each other." 兩相情願, both willing, takes 相 as xiāng, "mutually." A woman held prisoner in a cave has just been described as a love match.