into moanings and wailings about the eaves and angles; now
and then a gnashing and lashing rush of sleet along the window-panes;
and always the muffled and uncanny hammering of the gallows-builders in
the court-yard. After an age of this, another sound--far off, and coming
smothered and faint through the riot of the tempest--a bell tolling
twelve! Another age, and it was tolled again. By-and-by, again. A dreary
long interval after this, then the spectral sound floated to us once
more--one, two three; and this time we caught our breath; sixty minutes
of life left!

Clayton rose, and stood by the window, and looked up into the black sky,
and listened to the thrashing sleet and the piping wind; then he said:
'That a dying man's last of earth should be--this!' After a little he
said: 'I must see the sun again--the sun!' and the next moment he was
feverishly calling: 'China! Give me China--Peking!'

I was strangely stirred, and said to myself: 'To think that it is a
mere human being who does this unimaginable miracle--turns winter into
summer, night into day, storm into calm, gives the freedom of the great
globe to a prisoner in his cell, and the sun in his naked splendour to a
man dying in Egyptian darkness.'

I was listening.

'What light! what brilliancy! what radiance!... This is Peking?'

'Yes.'

'The time?'

'Mid-afternoon.'

'What is the great crowd for, and in such gorgeous costumes? What masses
and masses of rich colour and barbaric magnificence! And how they flash
and glow and burn in the flooding sunlight! What is the occasion of it
all?'

'The coronation of our new emperor--the Czar.'

'But I thought that that was to take place yesterday.'

'This is yesterday--to you.'

'Certainly it is. But my mind is confused, these days: there are reasons
for it.... Is this the beginning of the procession?'

'Oh, no; it began to move an hour ago.'

'Is there much more of it still to come?'

'Two hours of it. Why do you sigh?'

'Because I should like to see it all.'

'And why can't you?'

'I have to go--presently.'

'You have an engagement?'

After a pause, softly: 'Yes.' After another pause: 'Who are these in the
splendid pavilion?'

'The imperial family, and visiting royalties from here and there and
yonder in the earth.'

'And who are those in the adjoining pavilions to the right and left?'

'Ambassadors and their families and suites to the right; unofficial
foreigners to the left.'

'If yo