, this Peking carter, for those
that thought; for everybody realises that we are now caught and cannot
be driven out....

This was the 11th. On the 12th, the day was still more startling, for
somehow the shadow which has been lurking so near us seems to have
been thrown more forward and become more intense. The hero of the
affair is the one really brave man among our chiefs, of course--the
Baron von K----, the Kaiser's Minister to the Court of Peking.

The Baron is no stranger in Peking, although he has been here but a
twelvemonth in his new capacity as Minister. Fifteen years ago his
handsome face charmed more than one fair lady in the old pre-political
situation days, when there was plenty of time for picnics and
love-making. Then he was only an irresponsible attache; now he is here
as a very full-blooded plenipotentiary, with the burden of a special
German political mission in China, bequeathed him by his pompous and
mannerless predecessor, Baron von H----, to support. But a man is the
present German Minister if there was ever one, and it was in the newly
macadamised Legation Street that the incident I am about to relate
occurred.

Walking out in the morning, the German Minister saw one of the
ordinary hooded Peking carts trotting carelessly along, with the mule
all ears, because the carter was urging him along with many digs near
the tail. But it was not the cart, nor the carter, nor yet the mule,
which attracted His Excellency's immediate attention, but the
passenger seated on the customary place of the off-shaft. For a moment
Baron von K---- could not believe his eyes. It was nothing less than a
full-fledged Boxer with his hair tied up in red cloth, red ribbons
round his wrists and ankles, and a flaming red girdle tightening his
loose white tunic; and, to cap all, the man was audaciously and calmly
sharpening a big carver knife on his boots! It was sublime insolence,
riding down Legation Street like this in the full glare of day, with a
knife and regalia proclaiming the dawn of Boxerism in the Capital of
Capitals, and withal, was a very ugly sign. What did K---- do--go home
and invite some one to write a despatch for him to his government
deprecating the growth of the Boxer movement, and the impossibility
of carrying out conciliatory instructions, as some of his colleagues,
including my own chief, would have done? Not a bit of it! He tilted
full at the man with his walking stick, and before he could escape had