e did not break down.

Now there is nothing to do but wait and pray there are no weak
spots in Billy's backbone.

Cable just received. William is on the wing!

PEKING, CHINA, February, 1912.

Well, here we still are, my convalescent Jack and I, bottled up in
the middle of a revolution, and poor, helpless little Sada San
calling to me across the waters. Verily, these are strenuous days
for this perplexed woman.

It is a tremendous sight to look out upon the incomprehensible
saffron-hued masses that crowd the streets. I no longer wonder at
the color of the Yellow Sea.

But, Oh, Mate, if I could only make you see the gilded walled city,
in which history of the ages is being laid in dust and ashes, while
the power that made it is hastening down the back alley to a
mountain nunnery for safety! Peking is like a beautiful golden
witch clothed in priceless garments of dusty yellow, girded with
ropes of pearls. Her eyes are of jade, and so fine is the powdered
sand she sifts from her tapering fingers it turns the air to an
amber haze; so potent its magic spell, it fascinates and enthralls,
while it repels.

For all the centuries the witch has held the silken threads, which
bound her millions of subjects, she has been deaf--deaf to the
cries of starvation, injustice and cruelty; heedless to devastation
of life by her servants; smiling at piles of headless men; gloating
over torture when it filled her treasure-house.

Ever cruel and heartless, now she is all a-tremble and sick with
fear of the increasing power of the mighty young giant--Revolution.
She sees from afar her numbered days. She is crying for the mercy
she never showed, begging for time she never granted. She is a
tottering despot, a dying tyrant, but still a beautiful golden
witch.

We have not been here long but my soul has been sickened by the
sights of the pitiless consequences of even the rumors of war all
over the country and particularly in Peking. If only the
responsible ones could suffer. But it is the poor, the innocent
and the old who pay the price for the greed of the others. In
this, how akin the East is to the West! The night we came there
was a run on the banks caused by the report that Peking was to be
looted and burned. Crowds of men, women and even children,
hollow-eyed and haggard, jammed the streets before the doors of the
banks, pleading for their little all. Some of them had as much as
two dollars stored away! But