e Peking Banners seemed to be there
with their plain and bordered jackets showing their divisions; but of
Boxers there was not a sign. Where had the famed Boxers vanished to?

Thus we stood for some time, the enemy gazing as eagerly at us as we
at them. Strict orders must have come from the Palace, for not a
hostile sign was made. It was almost worth five days of siege just to
see that unique sight, which took one back to times when savage hordes
were overrunning the world. Peking is still so barbaric!

We sent back word that it might be possible to parley with the enemy,
and to learn, perhaps, the reason for this sudden truce; and soon
several members of the so-called general committee, whose organisation
and duties I confess I do not clearly understand, came out from our
lines and stood waving their handkerchiefs. But it was some time
before the gaudy-coated enemy would pay any attention to these
advances, and finally one of our committeemen, to show that he was a
man of peace and really wished to speak with them, went slowly forward
with his hands held high above his head. Then a thin, sallow Chinese,
throwing a sword to the ground, advanced from the Palace walls, and
finally these two were standing thirty or forty yards apart and
within hail of one another. Then a parley began which led to nothing,
but gave us some news. The board ordering firing to cease had been
carried out under instructions from Jung Lu--Jung Lu being the
Generalissimo of the Peking field forces. A despatch would certainly
follow, because even now a Palace meeting was being held. The Empress
Dowager, the man continued, was much distressed, and had given orders
to stop the fighting; the Boxers were fools....

Then the soldier waved a farewell, and retreated cautiously, picking
his way back through the ruins and masses of _debris_. Several times
he stopped and raised the head of some dead man that lay there, victim
to our rifles, and peered at the face to see whether it was
recognisable. In five days we have accounted for very many killed and
wounded, and numbers still lie in the exposed positions where they
fell.

The disappearing figure of that man was the end to the last clue we
came across regarding the meaning of this sudden quiet. The shadows
gradually lengthened and night suddenly fell, and around us were
nothing but these strangely silent ruins. There was barricade for
barricade, loophole for loophole, and sandbag for sandbag. What has