Moved a little by such thoughts, I advanced on the central gate, and peered through a chink near which an infantryman was standing alert, rifle in hand.  There were the marble courtyards, the beautiful yellow decorated roofs.  I could see them clearly, and then ... a rifle from the other side was discharged almost in my ear; a bullet hissed past a few inches from my head, too; and I had a flitting vision of a Chinese soldier in the sky-blue tunic of the Palace Guards darting back on the other side.  There must still be numbers of soldiery waiting sullenly beyond for the expected advance; they would only fall back in rapid flight as our men rushed in, just as they had been doing from the beginning.  I discharged my own revolver rather aimlessly through the chink in the hope that something would happen, but all became quiet again.  Everything was finished here.

But although the advance down this grand approach to the inner halls and Palaces had been stayed, nothing had been said about piercing through the great outer enclosures to the right and left; and, catching my pony, I rode round a corner where a broad avenue led to another set of entrances.  Perhaps here would be something.  All along I found a sprinkling of American infantrymen, in their sweaty and dust-covered khaki suits, lying down and fanning themselves with anything that came handy, and sending rude jests at one another.  Old-fashioned Chinese jingals, gaudy Banners, and even Manchu long-bows, were scattered on the ground in enormous confusion.  The Palace Guards belonging to the old Manchu levies had evidently been surprised here by the advance of the main body of American troops through the Dynastic Gate, and had fled panic-stricken, abandoning their antiquated arms and accoutrements as they ran.  The soldiery who had been doing all the fighting and firing must have been the more modern field forces engaged in the last attacks on the Legations, or those driven in on Peking by the rout on the Tientsin road.  Still, there was nothing worth seeing, and the miniature Tartar towers crowning the angles of the great pink walls looked down in contempt, as if conscious that no enemy could hurt them.  I must push along.

I trotted quickly, exchanging chaff with the Americans, who called out to me with curious oaths that they had had no breakfast, and wanted to know why in h——­ this fun was being stopped, and that they were being left there.  Alas!  I could give them no news.  I only swore back in the same playful way.  At the end of an immense wall I came on the last of this soldiery—­a corporal’s guard, squatting round a small wicket-gate and looking very tired.  They told me that they were still being shot at from somewhere on the inside; and even as I paused and looked a curious pot-pourri of missiles grounded angrily against the gate-top.  There were modern bullets, old iron shot, and two arrows—­a strange assortment.  Somehow those quivering arrows, shot from over the immense pink walls, and attempting to