n are compelled to wear. By an iron ring
mercilessly forced through his flesh and welded round his collar-bone
he was chained to a stone pillar, and so left to await his doom or to
rot on the reeking floor.

After prolonged deliberations amongst the authorities, it was decided
that the prisoner should be beheaded at Kiukiang, that being the
centre of the district in which his crime was committed.

Still clad in crimson clothes, the poor wretch was dragged by the
chain from his cell, too emaciated and broken to even stand. His hands
and feet were bound together with sharp cords and a bamboo pole thrust
between them, and in such manner he was carried through the streets by
two coolies, escorted by a few runners, to be thrown like a bundle of
old clothes into the hold of a police junk, which bore him more dead
than alive on his last voyage.

Owing to information extracted from Wang two further arrests were made
of members of the junk's crew, but the lowdah and one other succeeded
in making good their escape.

* * * * *

It was now summer, and the view looking south from Kiukiang city wall
was peaceful and grand. In the distance rose the majestic Lushan
range, the peaks of which were illumined by the setting sun. Nearer,
the low hills, clothed with firs and azaleas, rolled as a carpet to
the lake, which lay between them and the city ramparts. A narrow
causeway from the city to the hills, cut the lake in two. At the far
end of the causeway was a plot of level ground, strewn with potsherds
and heaps of refuse. Here, in contrast to its usual solitude, a dense
crowd had collected in evident anticipation of some interesting event.
Presently two or three horsemen and a motley gang of soldiers emerged
from the city and proceeded quickly along the causeway. Closely
following were coolies carrying three red burdens, on bamboo poles,
and these in turn were followed by more soldiers and a few officials
in sedan chairs. It was an execution. The hurrying cavalcade was
swallowed up in the dense crowd which happily served as a curtain to
hide this ghastly scene of human wrath from Nature's smiling
landscape. Half-an-hour later the official procession returned as
quickly as it went, and gradually the crowd, sauntering by the water's
edge, laughing, joking and making merry of the gruesome spectacle just
witnessed, filtered back through the city gates.

Next morning three wooden baskets on long poles wer