been battered open. The
cunning Japanese must have been there first and taken everything.
Alone that big lump of silver had been left because of its weight.

But there was something I missed. These _ku-ping_ had been emphatic
about the valuable weights we would find hidden--the standard weights
of China in pure gold, which were centuries old, they said, and were
the same as had been used during the Ming dynasty hundreds of years
before. I asked for them--where were they kept? Perhaps we might at
least have these.

Alas! they led me to a smaller chamber, with a curious little door
formed of a single slab of stone, and pointed once again
disconsolately to more rifled boxes. These outer chests covered
smaller boxes, which were of the size of the weights themselves. I had
always heard that the biggest weight of all was a square block of gold
equal to the weight of a full-grown man. I would like to have seen
that, but everything was gone. It was useless wasting any more time.

We came up again carrying some of those silk-lined boxes as
explanations and souvenirs. But our friends were now all standing
round some soldiers, who had accidentally knocked aside some flags of
stone, and had found a deep hole underneath. They were now jerking
away violently at some last obstruction, and finally they swept aside
everything and bared some steep steps. As we stood wondering what had
been discovered, and our hopes were almost revived, far down below
appeared a grimy face, and a man at last ran up, rapidly exclaiming
from surprise, as he mounted to the surface. It was one of our Chinese
informants! Then suddenly we saw the point, and in spite of our
discomfiture began laughing. The soldiers of the fatigue parties,
slower than us to understand, at length followed our example; then the
hundreds of small Chinese boys; then everyone else, until we were all
laughing. For we had been fooled and well fooled by those clever
little Japanese. When they had seized the Treasury, they had not only
discovered the general stores of silver, but had managed to find this
hidden entrance or some other near by. Without any trouble they had
gone down and taken everything, swept the place clean, and left,
probably as a supreme sarcasm, that one enormous lump of blackened
silver.... We were indeed well sold. It was immense.

At that particular moment I do not think any one was very bitter at
this absurd anti-climax after those great expectations. That is,