is useful, that flour is still more useful, and that every pound we can find in the native shops should be taken.  The obvious is often somewhat obscure in times like these, and the men who act are very laudable.  There is no denying it that on this 20th the Americans showed more energy than anybody else, and pushed everybody to sending out their carts and bringing in tons upon tons of food.  Every shop containing grain was raided, payment being made in some cases and in others postponed to a more propitious moment.  The American missionaries concentrated in a fortified missionary compound a couple of miles from us, and the last people to remain outside were hastily sent for, given twenty minutes in which to pack their things, and marched in as quickly as possible by a guard of American marines.  There were seventy white men, women and children, and countless herds of native schoolgirls and converts.  Their reports were the last we got.  Vast crowds of silent people had watched them pass through the eastern Tartar city to our Legation lines without comment or without hostility.  Gloomily the Peking crowd must have watched this strange convoy curling its way to a safer place, the missionaries armed in a droll fashion with Remingtons and revolvers, and some of the converts carrying pikes and carving-knives in their hands, for the Peking crowd and Peking itself has been, and is being, terrorised by the Boxers and the Manchu extremists, and is not really allied to them—­of that we all are now convinced.  But C——­, who was so nearly massacred, came in too with the American missionaries.  He managed somehow, after he was shot in a deadly place, to half-run and half-crawl until he was picked up and carried into the American missionary compound.  From what I heard, he knows nothing more about the death of the German Minister.  It was only a few hours ago, and yet it already seems days!

All the non-combatants were now rushed into the British Legation, and to the women and children join themselves dozens of men, whose place should be in the fighting-line, but who have no idea of being there.  Lines of carts conveying stores, clothing, trunks and miscellaneous belongings were soon pouring towards the British Legation, and long before nightfall the spacious compounds were so crowded with impedimenta and masses of human beings that one could hardly move there.  It was a memorable and an extraordinary sight.

The few Chinese shops that had been until now carrying on business in our Legation quarter in spite of the semi-siege and the barricades in a furtive way, were soon quietly putting up their shutters—­not entirely, but what they call three-quarters shut after the custom on their New Year holidays, when they are not supposed to trade, but do trade all the same.  The shop-boys, slipping their arms into their long coats and dusting off their trousers and shoes after the Peking manner with their long sleeves, made one feel in a rather laughable sort of way that finality