s. The Chinese brave
cautiously put his head up, and once again, with a crack, the
compliment was returned, and the soldier was slightly wounded, and now
we only peer through our loopholes and are careful of our heads. The
novelty of the armistice is wearing off, and we feel that we are only
gaining time.

Still, we are improving our position. There is a more friendly feeling
among the commands in our lines, and the various contingents are being
redistributed. By bribing the Yamen messenger, copies of the _Peking
Gazette_ have been obtained, and from these it is evident that
something has happened. For all the decreeing and counter-decreeing of
the early Boxer days have begun again, and the all-powerful Boxers
with their boasted powers are being rudely treated. It is evident that
they are no longer believed in; that the situation in and around
Peking is changing from day to day. The Boxers, having shown
themselves incompetent, are reaping the whirlwind. They must soon
entirely disappear.

It is even two weeks since the last one was shot outside the Japanese
lines at night, and now there is nothing but regular soldiery encamped
around us. This last Boxer was a mere boy of fifteen, who had stripped
stark naked and smeared himself all over with oil after the manner of
Chinese thieves, so that if he came into our clutches no hands would
be able to hold him tight. The most daring ones have always been boys.
He had crept fearlessly right up to the Japanese posts armed only with
matches and a stone bottle of kerosene, with which he purposed to set
buildings on fire and thus destroy a link in our defences. This is
always the Boxer policy. But the Japanese, as usual, were on the
alert. They let the youthful Boxer approach to within a few feet of
their rifles--a thin shadow of a boy faintly stirring in the thick
gloom. Then flames of fire spurted out, and a thud told the sentries
that their bullets had gone home.

When morning came we went out and inspected the corpse, and marvelled
at the terrible muzzle velocity of the modern rifle. One bullet had
gone through the chest, and tiny pin-heads of blood near the
breast-bone and between the shoulders was all the trace that had been
left. But the second pencil of nickel-plated lead had struck the
fanatic on the forearm, and instead of boring through, had knocked out
a clean wedge of flesh, half an inch thick and three inches deep, just
as you would chip out a piece of wood from a