Kansu soldiery on those open spaces were not attractive, and nobody
was very anxious to brave them. Who was to go? No sooner was it
mentioned in the Japanese Legation than, of course, a Japanese was
found ready to go; in fact, several Japanese almost came to blows on
the subject. Sugiyama, the _chancelier_, somehow managed to prove that
he had the best right, and go he did, but never to return.

It was dark before his carter turned up in Legation Street, covered
with dust and bespattered with blood, while I happened to be there. It
was an ugly story he unfolded, and it is hardly good to tell it. On
the open spaces facing the supplicating altars of Heaven and
Agriculture this little Japanese, Sugiyama, met his death in a horrid
way. The Kansu soldiery were waiting for more cursed foreigners to
appear, and this time they had their arms with them and were
determined to have blood. So they killed the Japanese brutally while
he shielded himself with his small hands. They hacked off all his
limbs, barbarians that they are, decapitated him, then mutilated his
body. It now lies half-buried where it was smitten down. The carter
who drove him was eloquent as only Orientals can be when tragedy
flings their customary reserve aside: "May my tongue be torn out if I
scatter falsehoods," he said again and again, using the customary
phrase, as he showed how it all happened. And late into the night he
was still reciting his story to fresh crowds of listeners, who gaped
with terror and astonishment. Squatting in a great Peking courtyard on
his hams and calling on the unseen powers to tear out his tongue if he
lied, he was a figure of some moment, this Peking carter, for those
that thought; for everybody realises that we are now caught and cannot
be driven out....

This was the 11th. On the 12th, the day was still more startling, for