ss herds
of native schoolgirls and converts. Their reports were the last we
got. Vast crowds of silent people had watched them pass through the
eastern Tartar city to our Legation lines without comment or without
hostility. Gloomily the Peking crowd must have watched this strange
convoy curling its way to a safer place, the missionaries armed in a
droll fashion with Remingtons and revolvers, and some of the converts
carrying pikes and carving-knives in their hands, for the Peking crowd
and Peking itself has been, and is being, terrorised by the Boxers and
the Manchu extremists, and is not really allied to them--of that we
all are now convinced. But C----, who was so nearly massacred, came in
too with the American missionaries. He managed somehow, after he was
shot in a deadly place, to half-run and half-crawl until he was picked
up and carried into the American missionary compound. From what I
heard, he knows nothing more about the death of the German Minister.
It was only a few hours ago, and yet it already seems days!

All the non-combatants were now rushed into the British Legation, and
to the women and children join themselves dozens of men, whose place
should be in the fighting-line, but who have no idea of being there.
Lines of carts conveying stores, clothing, trunks and miscellaneous
belongings were soon pouring towards the British Legation, and long
before nightfall the spacious compounds were so crowded with
impedimenta and masses of human beings that one could hardly move
there. It was a memorable and an extraordinary sight.

The few Chinese shops that had been until now carrying on business in
our Legation quarter in spite of the semi-siege and the barricades in
a furtive way, were soon quietly putting up their shutters--not
entirely, but what they call three-quarters shut after the custom on
their New Year holidays, when they are not supposed to trade, but do
trade all the same. The shop-boys, slipping their arms into their long
coats and dusting off their trousers and shoes after the Peking manner
with their long sleeves, made one feel in a rather laughable sort of
way that finality had been reached! They had that curious half-laugh
on their faces which signifies an intense nervousness being politely
concealed. Up to three o'clock these complaisant shopmen were still
selling things at a purely nominal price, which was not entered in the
books, but quietly pocketed by them for their own benefit. Having
co