naked tree-trunks.

I was shown round the day after its relief by one of the Sisters,
which, by the way, was effected by the Japanese, but not until the
third day after the Legations had been relieved, although it was only
twenty minutes' ride distant from them. The Mother Superior,
seventy-four years of age, who had spent thirty-eight years of her
life in Chinese mission work, lay dying--a daughter of Count Barais,
of Chateau Barais, near Bordeaux. She had belonged to the Order of
Sisters of Charity since her eighteenth year. Three mines had exploded
within the Mission enclosure, and walls and roofs were riddled and lay
tossed about in grotesque confusion. I went into the Cathedral church,
which they were using as a hospital.

Coming from the glare of white light outside, it was some moments
before I could distinguish anything in the gloom within. By degrees
one made out rows of rounded forms of little children lying on the
floor. Above, the stained-glass windows were broken in many places,
and the roof perforated where shells had entered, letting in shafts of
light that fell aslant the gloom. High up on the wall one lit up a
figure of Christ that with bowed head and extended, nail-pierced hands
seemed to point in eloquent silence to the little suffering children
below. The entire floor of the church, even up to the extinguished
lamp of the sanctuary, was occupied with them. In one explosion alone
eighty children were killed, and a still greater number injured. Many
more were ailing for want of sufficient food, because when the actual
relief came they had been reduced to only two ounces of rice per day,
and had but two days' rations left. Other children, who were helping
the nuns, moved noiselessly about among the prostrate forms. The
hushed silence of sanctuary was broken only by low moaning, or the
querulous sobbing of little children weary with pain. The Sister
brought me to see one little mite, whom she called the "first fruit"
of their recommenced labour.

It was a strange story, that of this little child. The French soldiers
who occupied that quarter of the city had come across a house where,
stretched on the kang side by side, were the bodies of all its
occupants. They had committed suicide on the advent of the Allies. As
the soldiers had not time to bury them immediately, intent as they
were on pillaging and looting the neighbourhood, they threw lime on
the bodies. After two days, when they came to throw th