understand one
another," I said to him. "These others with their moanings and cries are
but as children. Now let us make a compact. You hurry all the time and I
will give you" (here I whispered a figure into his ear that sent a
gratified smile over his face) "at the end of the journey. The others need
know nothing. This is between men."

He nodded assent. From that moment the trouble was over. Footsore mafoos,
lame horses, grumbling innkeepers--nothing mattered. "Let the fires burn
quickly." "Out with the horses," The other horse-keepers, not understanding
his changed attitude, toiled wearily after him. At night-time he would look
up, as he led his pack-pony in at the end of a record day, and his grim
smile would proclaim that he was keeping his end of the bargain.

"It is necessary for us to show these men something of the strong hand of
Japan," one of the leading Japanese in Seoul, a close associate of the
Prince Ito, told me shortly before I left that city. "The people of the
eastern mountain districts have seen few or no Japanese soldiers, and they
have no idea of our strength. We must convince them how strong we are."

As I stood on a mountain-pass, looking down on the valley leading to Ichon,
I recalled these words of my friend. The "strong hand of Japan" was
certainly being shown here. I beheld in front of me village after village
reduced to ashes.

I rode down to the nearest heap of ruins. The place had been quite a large
village, with probably seventy or eighty houses. Destruction, thorough and
complete, had fallen upon it. Not a single house was left, and not a single
wall of a house. Every pot with the winter stores was broken. The very
earthen fireplaces were wrecked.

The villagers had come back to the ruins again, and were already
rebuilding. They had put up temporary refuges of straw. The young men were
out on the hills cutting wood, and every one else was toiling at
house-making. The crops were ready to harvest, but there was no time to
gather them in. First of all, make a shelter.

During the next few days sights like these were to be too common to arouse
much emotion. But for the moment I looked around on these people, ruined
and homeless, with quick pity. The old men, venerable and dignified, as
Korean old men mostly are, the young wives, many with babes at their
breasts, the sturdy men, had composed, if I could judge by what I saw, an
exceptionally clean and peaceful community.

There was no