finding the compounds
filled with camels, great shaggy brutes that lay about at all angles,
over the courtyard, and snorted and nipped at the intruders. They
slept at night in their cart, wrapping up well in their bedding rolls,
shivering at times in the keen October wind. Their coolies shared the
k'ang within, with the camel drivers and other travellers, but Withers
and the shroff preferred the cart, for there were worse if smaller
animals than camels to be found in native hostelries. Toilsome, weary
days succeeded one another, broken by restless nights, yet ever they
pushed westward, slowly, laboriously.

The coolies brought them news of the wayside, gathering it each night
from the inns. A great mandarin had passed that way some days ago--a
great man surely, to judge by the length of the axles of his cart,
which stuck out a good foot beyond the hubs, marking him as a man of
importance. And a great yellow mule, with harness set with jade
stones, and the brasses polished,--oh, a very rich man, evidently! So
each night they heard accounts of the rich man who had gone ahead,
with his retinue, his family and servants and packmules. It was well
noised abroad, evidently, through the countryside. Travellers coming
from beyond Jehol had met him with his train, and the inns at which
they stopped always had news of his progress, outward bound. In a
hurry, too. And very fearful of the roadside dangers. Always in the
compounds before dusk, fearful of highwaymen.

To Withers, the suspense of the slow journey was well nigh unbearable.
He, too, was in a hurry, worn with fatigue and anxiety. At first, he
had been merely anxious to overtake the old man, to obtain
restitution. But with the wayside gossip prevailing, other fears
entered his mind. One day at noon time, they entered a village
apparently deserted. The heavy gates of the compounds were closed, not
a person visible in the long, straggling street. Every one had
withdrawn himself into his house, behind locked and bolted doors. At
the inn, they pounded repeatedly on the gates, asking admission.
Slowly, after a very long time, the gates were opened an inch, and it
could be seen that there was the pressure of many men on the inside,
ready to slam and bar them in an instant. Then, seeing they were but
travellers, they were hastily admitted into the courtyard, and the
gates closed and barred again. Bandits. A band of them was scouring
the country, thirty or more, down from Mongo