One of the officers and myself had the curiosity to go into the temple buildings where we had enjoyed such pleasant days.  They were deserted.  Part of the inner courtyard was all scorched and crumbled as if there had been a fire.  The straw was still lying about in the yard, and the implements of toil.  The actual temple itself at the end of the grassy plot remained untouched, and the grinning gods inside it were intact; but the dwelling rooms of our host were destroyed, and the rooms where we had lived ourselves were a mass of broken fragments, rubbish, and dust.  The place had evidently been heavily shelled.  There was not a trace of any human being, save that in the only room which remained undestroyed, on the matting of the hard Khang—­that is the divan which stretches like a platform across three-quarters of every Chinese room—­lay the dead body of a Chinese coolie.  The dog, the cat, and the hens had all gone.

We only remained a moment or two in the place, and as we left it the officer pulled my sleeve and pointed to a heap of rubbish near the gate.  There, amidst some broken furniture, a mass of refuse, burned and splintered wood, lay the tattered remains of a golden kite.