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 beheaded.  This caused some consternation among the rebels, as the death of the girl was looked upon as an omen of direct misfortune.

For a very long time she had been going around the country dropping beans into the ground outside any houses she came across, the superstition being that wherever a bean was dropped there in the very spot, perhaps at the very moment, for aught that we know, an invincible warrior would spring up.  She had dropped some millions of beans, but the ranks were not swelled as a consequence.

The ch’en-tai had also been out all night, and as men were captured so they were beheaded on the spot without mercy and their heads subsequently hung outside the city gates.  The headman of a small village—­some forty li from the city—­succeeded in capturing one of the leaders, and great credit was due to him; but soon the leader was rescued again by his followers, who then brutally killed and mutilated the body of the headman, causing him to undergo the ignominy of having his tongue and his heart cut out.  Fighting was going on everywhere, and by the end of March things were at their height.  The fact that rain was badly needed tended only to aggravate the situation, and that lustrous comet made things worse.  Day by day miserable processions brought the wounded into the city, and the last day of the month, taken by sudden fright and almost getting out of hand, the panic-stricken people raised the cry that the rebels were marching direct for the city gates.  Through the capital tactics adopted by the mandarins, however, this was prevented; but, on the following day, the