he twelve thousand soldiers sent hither from the far
homelands beyond the seas to rescue human beings from deadly peril. As he
stood over all these, a target for a hundred guns, the khaki-clad young
Kansan lifted his right hand high above his head and swung out the Stars
and Stripes to all the breezes of that August morning.

Then came the belching of cannon, the bursting of huge timbers, the
groaning of twisting iron, and through the splintered gates the Allied
Armies had entered the city.

Inside the walls the hundred thousand Boxers renewed the strife. The walls
and gates of the Foreign Legation were as stubbornly defended by the
Chinese fanatics on the outside now as the besieged Christians had
defended them against the Chinese on the inside. Entrance was made at last
through the sluiceway, or open sewer, draining out under the city walls.

It was a strange looking line of creatures who came crawling, waist-deep
in filth, through the sewer's channel. The old Aydelot sense of humor had
saved Thaine many a time. And he wondered afterward if he had not seen by
chance the ludicrous picture of himself in a huge mirror, if his heart
would not have burst with grief when Pryor Gaines came toward him, mute
and pallid, with outstretched hands.

The little group of soldiers who had fought and marched together had not
had off their clothes for seven days. A stubby two weeks' beard was on
each face. Their feet were raw from hard marching. Rain and dust and mud
and powder smoke had trimmed their uniforms, and now the baptism by
immersion in the Compound sewer had given them the finishing touches. But
the gaunt-faced men and women, the pitiful, big-eyed children, whose
emaciated forms told the tale of the six weeks' imprisonment, made them
forget themselves as these poor rescued Christians hugged and kissed their
brave rescuers.

Thaine hadn't kissed any woman except his mother since the evening when he
and Leigh Shirley had lingered on the Purple Notches in a sad-sweet moment
of separation. It lifted the pressure crushing round his heart when he saw
Goodrich, with shining eyes, bending to let a poor little missionary
stroke his grimy cheek.

The Boxers retired by degrees before the superior force, entrenching
themselves inside the Imperial City. Never in its history, centuries on
centuries old, had this Imperial City's sacred precincts been defiled by
foreign feet. Here the Boxer felt himself secure. Here the gods of his
fa