follows:--

1. Weining, in Kwei-chow, to the southeast 1,000 men

2. Kiang-ti Hill, in Yuen-nan, to the south 1,000 men

3. Several places around the city, to the west as far as the River
of Golden Sand 1,000 men

On March 13th a night attack was expected. Breathless, the foreigners
waited in their suspense, but it passed off without serious damage being
done. On the Sunday, the missionaries, almost at their wits' end with
mingled fear and excitement, occasioned by the strain which weeks of
anxiety must bring to the strongest, feared whether their services would
be got through in peace.

Meetings were being held all around the city, and gradually the
mandarins gained small successes. Prisoners--miserable specimens of men
fighting for they hardly knew what--were captured and brought to the
city, and, on March 16th, sixteen human heads, thrown in one gruesome
mass into a common basket, with upturned eyes gaping into the great
unknown, hideous-looking and bearing still the brutish stare of
hysterical craving and morbid rage, were carried by an armed squad of
military to the _yamen_.

They made a ghastly picture when hung over the gate of the city to put
the fear of death into the hearts of their brutal compatriots. The
officials, hard-worked and themselves feeling the strain of the whole
business, and incidentally fearful for the safety of their own heads,
were perturbed all this time by rumors coming from Weining, the
mutineers of which were alleged to be the fiercest of the three bands.
Up to now the officials had been playing a conciliating game. They had
been trying vainly to pacify, but now they found that they had to prove
their energies and their benevolence by acting the part of tyrants
rather than of administrators of mercy, by warring rather than by
peace-making, by fighting and forcing rather than by conciliating and
persuading.

On Easter Tuesday, fighting took place on the main road to the north,
when the _pen-fu_ and his men achieved a creditable success. The rebels
almost to a man were taken, and among the prisoners was a girl who had
been distributing the beans, a lovely damsel of eighteen, said to have
been the fiancee of the leader of that band. Both her legs were shot
through and she was considerably mutilated; but although the _pen-fu_
thought this sufficient punishment, instructions came from the capital
that she must die. She was accordingly taken outside the city and
beh