eed, has only become an
official cry--that is, one you are permitted to contradict privately
when you meet your dear colleagues in the street and wonder aloud
what is really going to happen. In the despatches Peking is still
quite safe, although unwholesome. Yet our own private political
situations, of which we were so proud and talked so vauntingly, have
all now disappeared, miserable things, and are quite lost and
forgotten. No one cares to talk about them. People merely say that all
business is temporarily suspended; that we must wait and merely mark
time.

But we discovered something worth knowing at the last moment to-day
which is, without any doubt, true. The Empress Dowager returned to-day
from the Summer Palace, and is now actually in the Forbidden City. We
are at a loss to know exactly as yet what this means, and whether it
is an augury of good or of bad. The Winter Palace is so near us; it is
just to the west of us. The fact that the redoubtable Tung Fu-hsiang
rode behind his Imperial mistress with his banner-bearers flaunting
their colours and his trumpets blaring as loudly as possible is,
however, not very reassuring. It seemed like defiance and treachery.

But at first, in spite of the Empress's entry, there were not many
rumours accompanying her; in the late afternoon they came so thick and
fast that no one had time to write them down. But of rumours we have
had more than our bellyful. Let me tell some of the facts.

First and foremost. The racecourse grand-stand where less than a month
ago we were all watching the struggles for victory between our various
short-legged ponies, has gone up in flames and puff--just like
that--the social battle-ground is no more. The Boxers, for everybody
who does anything nowadays is a Boxer, tried to grill our official
caretakers on the red-hot bricks, but the neighbouring village came to
the rescue and shouted the marauders out of the place. That is the
nearest danger which has been heard of. Immediately after this some
Legation students, riding out on the sands under the Tartar Wall, were
openly attacked by spear-armed men, and only escaped by galloping
furiously and firing the revolvers which everyone now carries. Most
important of all, however, to us is that aged Sir R---- H---- is
hauling down his colours, and has been rapidly calling in all his
scattered staff who live near the premises of the Tsung-li
Yamen--China's Foreign Office. Here we are, the Legations of al