from each other by walls of lesser strength, intended, with one
exception, in the opening of the twentieth century, not so much for
defense as for boundary lines.

The exception is the Imperial City, inside whose sacred precincts it was
firmly believed a foreigner might not set foot and not be stricken dead by
the gods. This City within a city had defenses the allied armies were yet
to come against. It lies on the north, inside the great wall. Just east of
it, along the north wall, was the Foreign Legation, whose south and east
bounds were lesser structures of brick and earth. Here all the foreigners
and many native Christians had been shut in for six long weeks, with the
infuriated Boxers hammering daily at their gates, mad for massacre.

Here they had barricaded themselves with all the meager means available.
They had fortified every gate with whatever might stop a bullet or check a
cannon ball. They filled up the broken places in the walls with piles of
earth; they dug deep trenches inside these walls, and inside these
trenches they had built up heaps of earthworks. Daily they strengthened
the weaker places and watched and prayed. No word from the big world
outside seemingly could come to them--a little handful of the Lord's
children, forgotten of Him, and locked dungeon deep from human aid. They
had sent out a cry for help and had sent up prayers for deliverance. How
far that cry had gone they could not know. Frowning walls besieged by
enemies lay all around them. They could only look up and lift up helpless
hands in prayer to the hot, unpitying August skies above them. Sickness
stalked in over the walls. Hunger tore its way through the gates. Death
swooped down, and sorrow seeped up, and despair lay in wait. But hope, and
trust, and faith, and love failed not.

They ate dogs and horses. They went half naked that they might make sand
bags of their clothes for greater defense. They exhausted every means for
protection and life, but they forgot not to pray.

On this August night, while unknown to the besieged the Allied Armies
encamped only six miles away, the reign of terror reached its height for
the little Christian stronghold.

The storm beat pitilessly on the starved and ragged captives. The rain
softened the earthworks and the rivers of water in the trenches threatened
to undermine the walls. Across these walls the incessant attack of cannon
and roar of rifles was beyond anything the six weeks' siege had kno