a furtive way, were soon quietly putting up their shutters--not
entirely, but what they call three-quarters shut after the custom on
their New Year holidays, when they are not supposed to trade, but do
trade all the same. The shop-boys, slipping their arms into their long
coats and dusting off their trousers and shoes after the Peking manner
with their long sleeves, made one feel in a rather laughable sort of
way that finality had been reached! They had that curious half-laugh
on their faces which signifies an intense nervousness being politely
concealed. Up to three o'clock these complaisant shopmen were still
selling things at a purely nominal price, which was not entered in the
books, but quietly pocketed by them for their own benefit. Having
completed my own arrangements, I began idly watching their actions,
they were so curious. At three o'clock sharp the last shutters went
up, the last shopman pasted a diamond-shaped Fu, or Happiness, of red
paper over the wooden bars, and vanished silently and mysteriously. It
was for all the world once again exactly like the telegraph-operator
in "Michael Strogoff," when the Tartars smash in the front doors of
his office and seize the person of the hero, while the clerk coolly
takes up his hat and disappears through a back door. These Chinese had
done business in the very same way, until the very last moment--the
very last.

And not only are the few shopmen slipping away, but also numbers of
others within our lines who had been half-imprisoned during the past
week by our barricades and incessant patrolling. Men, women, and
children, each with a single blue-cloth bundle tied across their
backs containing a few belongings, slip away; gliding, as it were,
rapidly across the open spaces where a shot could reach them, and
scuttling down mysterious back alleys and holes in the walls, the
existence of which has been unknown to most of us. This time the rats