lows he sent the woodwork into splinters, and,
springing up with a lithe, tiger-like jump, he clambered through the
gap, big man as he was, with surprising agility. Then there was a dead
silence for a few seconds and we waited in suspense. But presently
oaths and protests came from far back and drew nearer and nearer,
until I knew that the some one who had refused to answer had been duly
secured. The gates themselves were finally flung open, and I saw that
an oldish man of immense stature had been driven to do this work--a
man who, so far from being afraid, was only held in check by a loaded
revolver being kept steadily against his back. The Shantung man's face
had become devilish with rage, and I could see that he was slowly
working himself up into that Chinese frenzy which is such madness and
bodes no good to any one. I was at a loss to understand this scene.

Our captured carts were driven in and the gates securely shut; and
then, driving his captive still in front of him, my man led us, with a
rapidity which showed that he knew every inch of his ground, to a big
building at the side. Then it was my turn to understand and to stare.
Within the building a big altar had been clumsily made of wooden
boards and draped with blood-red cloth; and lining the wall behind it
was a row of hideously-painted wooden Buddhas. There were sticks of
incense, too, with inscriptions written in the same manner as those we
had seen being scraped so feverishly from the door-posts a few minutes
ago. Red sashes and rusty swords lay on the ground also. Here there
could be absolutely no mistake; it was a headquarters of that evil
cult which had brought such ruin and destruction in its train. The
Boxers had been in full force here.

The Shantung man, for reasons I could not yet unravel and did not care
to learn, had become absolutely livid with rage now, and the others,
who were all Catholics, shared his fury. They said that here converts
had been tortured to death--killed by being slit into small pieces and
then burned. Everybody knew it. With spasmodic gestures they called on
the captive to fling to the ground the whole altar, to smash his idols
into a thousand pieces, to destroy everything. But the man, resolute
even in captivity, sullenly refused. Then, with a movement of
uncontrollable rage, one man seized a long pole, and in a dozen blows
had broken everything to atoms. Idols, red cloth, incense sticks,
bowls of sacrificial rice and sword