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It would be quite polite to send back all except a few articles, however, for the supplies were levied from the inhabitants of the town. We kept the eggs and chickens, giving the yamen "runners" considerably more than their value in money, and they gratefully returned with the rice and potatoes.

Yesterday this person possessed no secret store of silver or gold, nor had he knowledge of any special amount of jade hidden among the mountains, but to his call there responded four score goats, the most select and majestic to be found in all the Province, of which, nevertheless, it was his yearly custom to sacrifice one, as those here can testify, and to offer another as a duty to the Yamen of Ping Siang, in neither case opening his eyes widely when the hour for selecting arrived.

On this same date came a secretary from the Tsung-li Yamen in person, accompanied by a trembling t'ingoh'ai, or card-bearer, frantically waving the white flag of truce. They must been very frightened, for never have I seen such convulsiveness.

"Why do your thoughts follow the actions of the noble Mandarin Ping Siang so insidiously, and why after each unjust exaction do your eyes look redly towards the Yamen? "Is he not the little finger of those at Peking, obeying their commands and only carrying out the taxation which others have devised? Indeed, he himself has stated such to be the fact.

He succeeded in obtaining the acquiescence of all his colleagues with the exception of the viceroy of the province, who exposed the iniquity of the design, but who, destitute of all support, was powerless to prevent its execution. At the least he resolved to save his honor and reputation by committing suicide, and he and his wife were found one morning hanging up in the hall of the yamen.

All spoken matter being thus complete between them, he gave him a mask with which he should pass unknown through the streets and into the presence of Ping Siang, a variety of weapons to use as the occasion arose, and a sign by which the attendants at the Yamen would admit him without further questioning.

Meanwhile the Governor had left his yamen by the fifth watch, before the day had yet broken, accompanied by an escort of about a hundred resolute men, carrying chains and manacles. Arriving at the still closed gate of the monastery, he made the greater part of his train hide to the right and left, keeping only some ten men about him.

Politically, it is that territory of Western Arabia between the Hejaz and Yamen in which the Idrisi has more control than anyone since his successful revolt against the Turks a year or two before the War.

Well, when he came to hear of it, he at once devised a plan to lay hold of these fans, so fabricating the charge against him of letting a government debt drag on without payment, he had him arrested and brought before him in the Yamen; when he adjudicated that his family property should be converted into money to make up the amount due to the public chest; and, confiscating the fans in question, he set an official value on them and sent them over here.

As if goaded by the terrors conjured up by these avenging armies, which are now so close, the Tsung-li Yamen, in some last despatches, has informed our Plenipotentiaries that it is decapitating wholesale the soldiery that have been firing on us that it wishes for personal interviews with all our Ministers to arrange everything, so that there may be no more misunderstandings later on. Vain hope!