put up our cots and went to bed, Mr. Chalfant making a few
pleasant remarks about the bedbugs that always swarm in such
a building, the centipedes that sometimes crawl into the ears or
nostrils of sleepers and the scorpions that occasionally fall from
the millet-stalk ceiling on to the bed or scuttle across the floor
to bite the person who unwarily walks in his bare feet. Under
the influence of such a soporific, I soon fell asleep. The next
morning we rose early, and while the cook was preparing our
coffee and eggs, we followed the trail of that awful odour to a
corner of the building, where, under some millet stalks, we
found a rude coffin which we had not noticed in the dim candlelight
of the night before. A Chinese of whom we inquired
said that it was empty. We could not in courtesy open a
coffin before dozens of interested Chinese, but it was very
plain to our olfactories that such an odour required a prompt
funeral.

As usual, a great but silent crowd watched me as I wrote
while the mules were being fed and at Hsien-chung, where
we stopped at noon to repair a shendza, Mr. Chalfant translated
a proclamation on a wall stating that an indemnity of
110,000 taels had to be paid for damage to the railway during
the Boxer outbreak and that 14,773 taels had been assessed on
Wei County. The people read it with scowling faces, but they
said nothing to us, though they looked as if they wanted to.

At two o'clock, we entered the ruined Presbyterian compound,
a mile southeast of the city of Wei-hsien. It was
thrilling to hear on the scene of the riot Mr. Chalfant's
account of the attack by about a thousand furious Boxers;