deserted villages, twenty, twenty-five, and
even thirty miles a day, they pushed on toward the Chinese capital.

And ever before them the Boxers slowly receded, stinging grievously as
they moved. Sure were they that at last only dire calamity could await
that slender column moving across the plains, led under a flag of red,
white, and blue, with bands ever playing _The Star-Spangled Banner_, while
from line on line rolled out that weird battle cry of "Rock Chalk! Jay
Hawk! K U!" Sure were they that this stubborn little bands of soldiers
foolishly following the receding Boxer must at last crush itself like
dead-ripe fruit against the ancient and invincible walls of Peking.

On the evening of the sixth day from Yang-Tsun the twelve thousand men of
the Allied Armies, flower of the world's soldiery, stumbled into camp with
their outposts in sight of the great walls of the City of Peking. This had
been the longest and hottest of all the days, with the weariest length of
march. A great storm cloud was rising in the west and the air hung hot and
still before it.

Thaine Aydelot and his comrades threw themselves down, too exhausted to
care for what might happen next.

"This is the hottest day I ever knew," declared McLearn wearily, as he lay
prone on the ground looking up at the hot sky with unblinking eyes.

"I reckon you never hit the National pike on an August day, out between
Green Castle and Terre Haute down in Indianny," Binford suggested.

"Nor St. Marys-by-the-Kaw," Boehringer, a Kansas man, added. "There's
where you get real summery weather."

"Oh, kill him, Aydelot, he's worse than a Boxer. Don't you know I'm from
Boston originally, which is only a State of Mind?" Goodrich urged.

"No matter what state you are from originally, you are in China now, which
is in a state of insurrection that we must get ready for a state of
resurrection tomorrow. What are you thinking about, T. Aydelot? You look
like Moses and the prophets." McLearn half turned over with the question.

Thaine, who was lying on his side, supporting his head on his hand, quoted
softly:

"'Oh, the prairies' air so quiet, an' there's allers lots of room
In the golden fields of Kansas, when the
Sun
Flowers
Bloom.'"

A low boom of thunder rolled across the western sky; a twilight darkness
fell on the earth, and a long night of storm and stress began for the army
of deliverance encamped before Pek