biest and the other French missionaries in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. I should never have mentioned this to you
lest you should not have believed it, but now that the command is
at my feet I may make this avowal without any hesitation as to
your accepting it. As you really think I can best succeed to the
command of the force when you resign it, I am perfectly willing
to accept the task."

To which Gordon replied: "Very well, then. That is settled." With this
private understanding, as to which nothing has been published until
this moment, the conversation closed with a final injunction from
Gordon of profound secrecy, as, should it become known, he might be
unable to get certain of his more ambitious officers to take part in
capturing the city. When Gordon therefore turned to Macartney, and
asked him to proceed to the Lar Wang's palace and inform him that the
terms of the convention must be carried out, it is necessary in order
to throw light on what follows to state what their relations were at
that moment. Gordon had selected Macartney as his successor in
preference to all his own officers.

Macartney hastened to the Lar Wang's palace, but as he had lent Gordon
his horse, his movements were slightly retarded. On reaching the
building he noticed some signs of confusion, and when he asked one of
the attendants to take him at once to his master, he received the
reply that the Lar Wang was out. Sir Halliday Macartney is not a man
to be lightly turned from his purpose, and to this vague response he
spoke in peremptory terms:

"The matter is of the first importance. I _must_ see the Lar Wang.
Take me to him."

Then the servant of the Taeping leader did a strange thing.

"You _cannot_ see my master," he said, and turning his face to the
wall, so that no one else might see, he drew his open hand in a
cutting position backwards and forwards. This is the recognised
Chinese mode of showing that a man's head has been cut off.

Being thus apprised that something tragic had happened, Macartney
hastened away to Wuliungchow to keep his appointment with Gordon, and
to acquaint him with what had taken place at the Lar Wang's palace.
But no Gordon came, and more than a day elapsed before Macartney and
he met again under dramatic circumstances at Quinsan. After waiting at
Wuliungchow some hours, Sir Halliday resolved to proceed to the
Futai's camp, and learn there what had happened. But