informing him of the emperor's abandonment of his capital, and
offering to go over, with all the troops under his command, to the
service of Genghis Khan if Genghis Khan would receive him.

When Genghis Khan heard thus of the retreat of the emperor from his
capital, he was, or pretended to be, much incensed. He considered the
proceeding as in some sense an act of hostility against himself, and,
as such, an infraction of the treaty and a renewal of the war. So he
immediately ordered one of his leading generals--a certain chieftain
named Mingan--to proceed southward at the head of a large army and lay
siege to Yen-king again.

The old emperor, who seems now to have lost all spirit, and to have
given himself up entirely to despondency and fear, was greatly alarmed
for the safety of his son the prince, whom he had left in command at
Yen-king. He immediately sent orders to his son to leave the city and
come to him. The departure of the prince, in obedience to these
orders, of course threw an additional gloom over the city, and excited
still more the general discontent which the emperor's conduct had
awakened.

The prince, on his departure, left two generals in command of the
garrison. Their names were Wan-yen and Mon-yen. They were left to
defend the city as well as they could from the army of Monguls under
Mingan, which was now rapidly drawing near. The generals were greatly
embarrassed and perplexed with the difficulties of their situation.
The means of defense at their disposal were wholly inadequate, and
they knew not what to do.

At length one of them, Wan-yen, proposed to the other that they should
kill themselves. This Mon-yen refused to do. Mon-yen was the commander
on whom the troops chiefly relied, and he considered suicide a mode of
deserting one's post scarcely less dishonorable than any other. He
said that his duty was to stand by his troops, and, if he could not
defend them where they were, to endeavor to draw them away, while
there was an opportunity, to a place of safety.

So Wan-yen, finding his proposal rejected, went away in a rage. He
retired to his apartment, and wrote a dispatch to the emperor, in
which he explained the desperate condition of affairs, and the
impossibility of saving the city, and in the end declared himself
deserving of death for not being able to accomplish the work which his
majesty had assigned to him.

He enveloped and sealed this dispatch, and then, calling his domestics
to