or little mite nearly broke her heart.

Ban-chiao, which we reached early the next morning, is a considerable
town, where most of the people earn their livelihood at dyeing. Those
who do not dye drink tea and pass rude remarks about itinerant magnates,
such as the author. I passed over the once fine, rough-planked bridge at
the end of the town.

In the evening we are at Yung-ch'ang. Here I saw for the first time in
my life a man carrying a _cangue,_ and a horrible, sickening feeling
seized me as I tramped through the densely-packed street and watched the
poor fellow. The mob were evidently clamoring for his death, and were
prepared to make sport of his torments. There is nothing more glorious
to a brutal populace than the physical agony of a helpless
fellow-creature, nothing which produces more mirth than the despair, the
pain, the writhing of a miserable, condemned wretch.

Great drops of sweat bathed his brow, and as one, looked on one felt
that he might pray that his hot and throbbing blood might rush in
merciful full force to a vital center of his brain, so that he might
fall into oblivion. The jeers and the mockery of a pitiless multitude
seemed too awful, no matter what the man's crime had been.

Yung-ch'ang (5,500 feet) is as well known as any city in Far Western
China. I stayed here for two days' rest, the only disturbing element
being a wretch of a mother-in-law who made unbearable the life of her
son's wife, a girl of about eighteen, who has probably by this time
taken opium, if she has been able to get hold of it, and so ended a
miserable existence.

On a return visit this mother-in-law, as soon as she caught sight of me,
ran to fetch an empty tooth-powder tin, a small black safety pin, and
two inches of lead pencil I had left behind me on the previous visit. I
have made more than one visit to Yung-ch'ang, and the people have always
treated me well.

Along the ten li of level plain from the city, on the road which led up
again to the mountains, I counted-no less than 409 bullocks laden with
nothing but firewood, and 744 mules and ponies carrying cotton yarn and
other general imports coming from Burma. There was a stampede at the
foot of the town, and quite against my own will, I assure the reader, I
got mixed up in the affair as I stood watching the light and shade
effects of the morning sun on the hill-sides. Buffaloes, with a crude
hoop collar of wood around their coarse necks, dragged rough-hewn plan