may overtake all for harbouring evil-doers.  Yet even this is done on no system.  It is irresolute, foolish.  A day or two ago, from the top of the Tartar Wall, where I was idly sitting, I saw a huge pillar of smoke roll up on the horizon ten or fifteen miles away, and gradually spread farther and farther.  The air was very still, for the heat can still be baking in the midday of this autumn month, and that smoke hung on the skies like some funeral pall.  Into the hearts of a whole country-side it must have struck a blind terror, for the peasants still believe that they are all to die as soon as the troops move out.  The panic is thus only being added to; and a sort of blind scourging of people who may not be in the least guilty can never be of use.  There is also still the same palsy on everyone and everything in Peking.  No one really knows what is going to happen.  No one very much cares.  They say that this is being debated in Europe, and that there are divided counsels which may bring about a split and really turn the various corps now nominally allied to one another into active enemies, as I dream when I see those jealous guards at the Palace entrances....

Yesterday some Chinese whom I had known in the old days came stealthily to see me, and as soon as they were alone with me, without excuse or warning, they fell on their knees and began bitterly weeping.  How sad, indeed, they were, these respectable people of the Chinese bourgeoisie—­so sad that for a long time I could not persuade them to speak.  Yet even as they wept they were dignified in a curious way, and you felt that you were in the presence of men who had only been cruelly wronged.  At length they began speaking.  They had lost everything, absolutely everything, they said, what with the Boxers and the sack, all this long, unending Reign of Terror.  But that they did not mind.  They were bitter and beyond consolation because they had lost the intangible—­their honour.  Each one had had women of their households violated.  One, with many hideous details, told me how ... soldiers came in and violated all his womankind, young and old.  That account, muttered to me with trembling lips, was no invention.  Their blanched and haggard faces showed that it was only the truth they were speaking.  About such elemental tragedies no one lies.

I tried to comfort these poor men as best I could.  I told them old sayings which had once been familiar to me; it was hard to know really what to do.  Yet they at length became more philosophic, and said they understood that this was a visitation which the nation had deserved.  China had been utterly wrong; it had been madness.  Then they remained silent, and that silence was like a sermon straight from Heaven, both for them and for me.  I saw dimly for a few seconds many things, and understood that it was useless saying more.  But as they were wretchedly poor, I gave them silver from the rich men’s houses, which seemed very Biblical—­each man as