rter. Still in some Legations they ordered fifty carts at
any price, with the most lavish promises of reward for those that
could manage to secure them. All the official servants soon came back
trembling, saying that they had found a few carts, but that it was _pu
yi t'ing_--not at all sure whether the carters would dare to move when
daylight came. For the whole city is already in a fresh uproar; people
are flying in every direction in the night. Stories come in of
officials who have been pulled out of their chairs and forced to
_K'et'ou_ to Boxers to show their respect to the new power. Prince
Tuan has been appointed President of the Tsung-li Yamen, high Manchus
have been placed in charge of the Boxer commands, and rice is being
issued to them from the Imperial granaries. There is no end to the
tales that now come in, since everybody has understood that there is
no need for concealment and that there is going to be some sort of
war. At two o'clock I even began to get news of what the Empress
Dowager had been doing, and how the Boxer partisans had become so
strong that it was absolutely impossible to hope for anything but the
worst.

Once when I got some details which I thought of importance, I tried to
find my chief in order to communicate it to him. But he was lost in
the middle of the night, conferring unofficially with some of his
colleagues; and I could but feel immensely amused when in his office I
saw that he had been scribbling some frenzied notes on the back of a
completed despatch, dealing with one of those petty little affairs
which were so important only the other day.

Ah, where are the dear little political situations of only a few weeks
ago; those safe little political situations which redounded so much to
the credit of those that made them and did not contain any of the
dread elements of our present very real and terrible one! Like
soldiers who have degenerated from the chasing of mere vagabonds of
mediocre importance, so have our Peking Ministers Plenipotentiary and
Envoys Extraordinary fallen from their proud estate to mere diplomatic
make-beliefs full of wind--wind-blown from much tilting at windmills,
with their Governments rescuing them Sancho Panza-like at the eleventh
hour....

But though for us there is still some hope, there is very little for
the wretched native Christians quartered in the palace grounds of
Prince Su, whom we have saved from the Boxers.

They soon heard the news, too, that