ished our journey I learned
to doubt their claim to detect Christians by the sign of the cross.

"We ate at the roadside booths, slept often in a gateway or by the side
of a wall under the open sky, and after several days' wandering, we
reached the yamen of my uncle. But we dare not enter and reveal our
identity, lest we implicate them, for we found the Boxers strong
everywhere, and even the officials feared their prowess. We hung about
the yamen begging in such a way as not to arouse suspicion, until an
old servant who had been in the family for many years, and whom I knew
well, came upon the street. I followed him begging until we were out of
earshot of others, and then told him in a singsong, whining tone, such
as beggars use, who I was and why I was there, and asked him to let my
uncle know, and said that if they would open the small gate in the
evening we would be near and could enter unobserved.

"At first he could not believe it was I, for by this time we indeed
looked like veritable beggars, but he was finally convinced and
promised to tell my uncle. After nightfall he opened the gate and led
us in by a back passage to my aunt's apartments where she and my uncle
were waiting for me. They both burst into tears as they beheld my
plight. Two old serving women, who had been many years in the family,
helped us to change our clothes and gave us a bath and food. My feet
had suffered the most. They were swollen and ulcerated and the dirty
rags and dust adhering to the sores had left them in a wretched
condition. It took many baths before we were clean, and weeks before my
feet were healed.

"We remained with my uncle until the close of the Boxer trouble, and
until my grandfather's return from Hsian where he had gone with the
Empress Dowager and the court, and then I came back to Peking."

"Your grandmother must have felt ashamed when she heard how hard it had
gone with you," I remarked.

"We never mentioned the matter when talking together. That was a time
when every one was for himself. Death stared us all in the face."

"Where is your slave girl now? I should like to see her," I remarked.

"After the troubles were over I married her to a young man of my
uncle's household. I will send for her and bring her to see you."

She did so. I found she had forgotten much of what she had learned of
Christianity, but she remembered that there was but one God and that
Jesus Christ was His Son to whom alone she should pray.