regulations of life still in existence. He, like everyone of the
hundreds of thousands of Peking and the millions of North China, is
waiting--waiting more patiently than impatient Westerners, but waiting
just as anxiously; waiting with ear wide open to every rumour; waiting
with an eye on every shadow--to know whether the storm is going to
break or blow away. There is something disconcerting, startling,
unseemly in being waited on by those who you know are in turn waiting
on battle, murder, and sudden death. You feel that something may come
suddenly at any moment, and though you do not dare to speak your
thoughts to your neighbour, these thoughts are talking busily to you
without a second's interruption. For if this storm truly comes, it
must sweep everything before it and blot us all out in a horrible way.
Our servants tell us so.

These servants of polite Peking society are favoured mortals, for they
one and all are of the Eight Banners, direct descendants of the Manchu
conquerors of China. And, strangely enough, although they are thus
directly tied to the Manchu dynasty, and that some of them may be even
Red Girdles or lineal descendants of collateral branches of the
Imperial house, they are still more tightly tied to the foreigner
because they are Roman Catholic dating from the early days of
Verbiest and Schall, when the Jesuits were all supreme. On Sundays and
feast days they all proceed to the Vicar Apostolic's own northern
cathedral, and witness the Elevation of the Host to the discordant and
strange sound of Chinese firecrackers, a curious accompaniment,
indeed, permitted only by Catholic complacency. This they love more
than the Throne.

Your Bannerman servant is now the medium of bringing in countless
rumours which he barefacedly alleges are facts, and in impressing on