dream of home that night. He slept on his arms the
heavy sleep of utter weariness, which Little Kemper's bugle call broke at
three o'clock the next morning. Before the August sun had crawled over the
eastern horizon the armies were swinging up the Peiho river toward Peking.
The American troops were leading the column now, as Thaine Aydelot had
wished they might, and in all that followed after the day at Peit-Tsang
the Stars and Stripes, brave token of a brave people, floated above the
front lines of soldiery, even to the end of the struggle.

It was high noon above the Orient, where the Peiho flows beside the
populous town of Yang-Tsun. The Boxer army routed by the battle of
Peit-Tsang had massed its front before the town, a formidable array in
numbers, equipment, and frenzied eagerness to halt here and forever the
poor little line of foreign soldiers creeping in upon it from the sea. The
Boxers knew that they could match the fighting strength of this line with
quadruple force. The troops coming toward them had marched twelve miles
under the August heat of a hundred degrees, through sand and alkali dust,
in the heavy humid air saturated with evil odors. They had had no food
since the night before, nor a drink of water since daydawn. Joyful would
it be to slaughter here the entire band and then rush back to the hoary
old City of Peking with the triumphant message that the Allied Armies of
the World had fallen before China. Then the death of every foreigner in
the Empire would be certain.

At noon the battle lines were formed. In the swinging into place as Thaine
Aydelot stood beside Tasker, surrounded by his comrades, Little Kemper
dashed by him.

"Here's where the corn-fed Kansans do their work," he said gaily to the
Kansas men.

"With a few bean-eaters from Boston to help," Goodrich responded.

"And a Hoosier to give them culture," Binford added.

"Yes, yes, with the William Penn Quakers and the Pennsylvania Dutch,"
Schwoebel roared, striking McLearn on the shoulder.

Men think of many things as the battle breaks, but never do they fight
less bravely because they have laughed the moment before.

Thaine was in the very front of the battle lines. In the pause before the
first onslaught he thought of many things confusedly and a few most
vividly. He thought of Leigh Shirley and her childish dream of Prince
Quippi in China--the China just beyond the purple notches. He thought of
his mother as she had looked that s