心疼難忍 I Thought You Had Been Killed
老嫗一把抱住道：「兒啊，你這幾日不來家，我只說是山主拿你去，害了性命，是我心疼難忍。你既不曾被害，何以今日才來？你繩擔、柯斧俱在何處？」老妪一把抱住道：「儿啊，你这几日不来家，我只说是山主拿你去，害了性命，是我心疼难忍。你既不曾被害，何以今日才来？你绳担、柯斧俱在何处？」
逐句解 Line by line
The old woman caught him up in her arms and said, "Child, these last few days you have not come home, and I could only suppose the master of the mountain had taken you and had your life, and the pain in my heart was past bearing.
山主, master of the mountain, is what the local people call the fiend — not Great King of the Southern Mountain, which was the title he gave himself. To the family at the foot of the hill he is simply the one who owns the place. 心疼難忍, heart-pain hard to bear, is the everyday phrase for grief and also for a mother's fondness.
Since you were not harmed after all, how is it you only come today?
不曾被害 takes 曾 as céng in the not-yet-ever frame. The question is the exact one any parent asks after fear turns to relief, and it has an edge of reproach in it that the novel does not smooth away.
Where are your rope and carrying-pole and your hatchet?"
And this is the line that makes her real. Her son is back from the dead and her third sentence is about the tools. 繩擔 is the rope and pole, and 擔 is dàn in it — the pole-load, a noun, one of three places in this chapter that reading is needed. For a household this poor, a lost hatchet is a serious matter.
The old woman's three sentences run: I thought you were dead, why are you so late, and where are the tools. That is a real person, and the last question is the one that tells you how poor they are.
She does not know yet that there are four monks and a horse standing behind her son in the yard. The novel lets the family have their reunion first and brings the guests in afterwards, which is the right order and also the kinder one.