The big Shantung recruit, whom I had come across so oddly only three days before, was now once again plainly excited and smelled quarry.  I remembered, then, that there was nothing very strange in the decisive actions of all my followers; they were being led by this man and told exactly what to do.  He had, after all, been outside all the time, and knew what had been going on and where now to strike hard!  Quickly, without speaking a word, he pushed ahead, and arriving at the big gates of another inn, loudly called on some one inside to open.  He could not have got any very satisfactory answer, for the next thing I saw was that he had sprung like lightning from his stolen pony, had thrown his rifle to the ground, and was attacking a latticed window with an old bayonet he had been carrying in his hand.  With half a dozen furious blows he sent the woodwork into splinters, and, springing up with a lithe, tiger-like jump, he clambered through the gap, big man as he was, with surprising agility.  Then there was a dead silence for a few seconds and we waited in suspense.  But presently oaths and protests came from far back and drew nearer and nearer, until I knew that the some one who had refused to answer had been duly secured.  The gates themselves were finally flung open, and I saw that an oldish man of immense stature had been driven to do this work—­a man who, so far from being afraid, was only held in check by a loaded revolver being kept steadily against his back.  The Shantung man’s face had become devilish with rage, and I could see that he was slowly working himself up into that Chinese frenzy which is such madness and bodes no good to any one.  I was at a loss to understand this scene.

Our captured carts were driven in and the gates securely shut; and then, driving his captive still in front of him, my man led us, with a rapidity which showed that he knew every inch of his ground, to a big building at the side.  Then it was my turn to understand and to stare.  Within the building a big altar had been clumsily made of wooden boards and draped with blood-red cloth; and lining the wall behind it was a row of hideously-painted wooden Buddhas.  There were sticks of incense, too, with inscriptions written in the same manner as those we had seen being scraped so feverishly from the door-posts a few minutes ago.  Red sashes and rusty swords lay on the ground also.  Here there could be absolutely no mistake; it was a headquarters of that evil cult which had brought such ruin and destruction in its train.  The Boxers had been in full force here.

The Shantung man, for reasons I could not yet unravel and did not care to learn, had become absolutely livid with rage now, and the others, who were all Catholics, shared his fury.  They said that here converts had been tortured to death—­killed by being slit into small pieces and then burned.  Everybody knew it.  With spasmodic gestures they called on the captive to fling to the ground the whole altar,