ter. For this reason he will narrate
to him the things he has seen--things at which the lesser ones would
undoubtedly perish in terror without offering to strike a blow."

"Speak," said Ling, "without fear and without concealment."

"In numbers the rebels are as three to one with the bowmen, and are,
in addition, armed with matchlocks and other weapons; this much I have
already told," said the spy. "Yesterday they entered the village of Ki
without resistance, as the dwellers there were all peaceable persons,
who gain a living from the fields, and who neither understood nor
troubled about the matters between the rebels and the army. Relying on
the promises made by the rebel chiefs, the villagers even welcomed them,
as they had been assured that they came as buyers of their corn and
rice. To-day not a house stands in the street of Ki, not a person lives.
The men they slew quickly, or held for torture, as they desired at the
moment; the boys they hung from the trees as marks for their arrows.
Of the women and children this person, who has since been subject to
several attacks of fainting and vomiting, desires not to speak. The
wells of Ki are filled with the bodies of such as had the good fortune
to be warned in time to slay themselves. The cattle drag themselves from
place to place on their forefeet; the fish in the Heng-Kiang are dying,
for they cannot live on water thickened into blood. All these things
this person has seen."

When he had finished speaking, Ling remained in deep and funereal
thought for some time. In spite of his mild nature, the words which
he had heard filled him with an inextinguishable desire to slay in
hand-to-hand fighting. He regretted that he had placed the decision of
the matter before Li Keen.

"If only this person had a mere handful of brave and expert warriors, he
would not hesitate to fall upon those savage and barbarous characters,
and either destroy them to the last one, or let his band suffer a like
fate," he murmured to himself.

The return of the messenger found him engaged in reviewing the bowmen,
and still in this mood, so that it was with a commendable feeling of
satisfaction, no less than virtuous contempt, that he learned of the
Mandarin's journey to Peking as soon as he understood that the rebels
were certainly in the neighbourhood.

"The wise and ornamental Li Keen is undoubtedly consistent in all
matters," said Ling, with some refined bitterness. "The only information
re