been confined in a legation quarter. The plot
was this:

When Prince Ching and his progressive associates in Peking discovered
that they could not vote down the Boxer princes, they dared not openly
oppose them, but they secretly decided that the representatives of the
Powers must not be massacred else the doom of China was sealed. When
they discovered that Yuan Shih-kai and the other great viceroys had
decided by stratagem to foil the Boxers even though they must set all
the imperial edicts at naught, they decided, for the sake of the
protection of the legations and the preservation of the empire, that
they would do the same. They secretly sent supplies of food to the
besieged, which the latter feared to use lest they be poisoned. But
more than that they kept their own armies in Peking as a guard and as a
final resort in case there was danger of the legation being overcome,
and as a matter of fact there were regular pitched battles between the
troops of Prince Ching and his associates and those of the Boxer
leader, Tung Fu-hsiang. Had the Boxers finally succeeded, Yuan Shih-kai
and Prince Ching and their associates would have lost their heads, but
as the Boxers failed it was they who went to their graves by the short
process of the executioner's knife.

So Yuan was between two fires. He had disobeyed the commands of the
Emperor in not coming to Peking and had therefore incurred his
displeasure and caused his downfall. He had disobeyed the Empress
Dowager in not putting to death the foreigners in his province, and if
the Boxers were successful he would surely lose his head on that
account. The Boxers, however, were not successful and as his
disobedience had helped to save the empire, Yuan, so long as the
Dowager remained in power, was safe.

But a day of reckoning must inevitably come. The Empress Dowager was an
old woman, the Emperor was a young man. In all human probabilities she
would be the first to die, while his only hope was in her outliving the
Emperor, who had sworn vengeance on all those who had been instrumental
in his imprisonment.

I have a friend in Peking who is also a friend of one of the greatest
Chinese officials. This official has gone into the palace daily for a
dozen years past and knows every plot and counterplot that has been
hatched in that nest of seclusion during all that time, though he has
been implicated in none of them. He has held the highest positions in
the gift of the empire withou