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march had been a hard one. The air was close and stiflingly hot, the dust choking, one man in five had been forced by heat prostration to fall out, and the column had moved fifteen miles, a long march under such conditions. Even the toughest old veterans were almost dropping with fatigue. Suddenly there came a burst of rifle shots from the enemy's trenches. The sound seemed to infuse new life into the weary men. It invigorated them, like fresh air and wine.

"Get the day's work over before dark, boys!" shouted a sergeant, and with a yell they charged straight at the trenches, their fatigue forgotten, the lust of battle shining in their eyes. This was more than the Chinese were prepared for. Men who would not stay to be shot at long range, but made great haste to come nearer, with evident intent to do bodily harm, were clearly the worst kind of "foreign devils." Their European military instructors had taught them how to handle their guns and to make trenches, but to stay in the trenches and fight was a different matter. A goodlly number of them were relieved of the embarrassment of the situation by the fierce men in khaki sending them to join their ancestors, and those not so disposed of scrambled and

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scurried out of the trenches and behind the wall. But even there they were no safer. The "foreign devils," without respect for Chinese precedent, did not hesitate to go over the wall and pursue them into the town. Then, in sheer disgust with such proceedings, Imperial soldiers and "Boxers" alike threw away their weapons and ran, like scared coyotes, away to the northward and when last seen were only vanishing points on the horizon line.

The English artillerymen firing upon the trenches were not aware of how quickly the Americans had carried them and their shots were more accountable, than those of the Chinese, for our eight killed and sixty wounded.

Meanwhile the situation of the foreign legations in Pekin had become extremely critical. On June 9th they had been compelled to mass themselves in the British Legation's compound, which was strongest for defence, and ever since that time were in a state of siege. June 11th, the Japanese Secretary of Legation, Mr. Sugiyama, was murdered by Imperial soldiers. June 13th, the Boxers made an attack in force, burned a chapel and some other buildings and killed some of the defenders, but were successfully repelled. June 19th, the Chinese government ordered the legations to leave Pekin within twenty-four hours, hoping to get them out from their defences, where they might be conveniently butchered by the "Boxers." June 20th, the German minister, Baron Von Ketteler, venturing to go out on official business to the Chinese Foreign Office, was shot down in the street and his interpreter was severely wounded.

Thereafter the Imperial soldiers and "Boxers" rained shot and shell upon the defences of the foreigners, where there were six hundred Americans and Europeans, and there thousand Chinese refugees (Chinese converts) and protected employees. Siege barricades were erected in the streets, from which frequent ferocious attacks were made, by day and night, and marksmen on the wall fired incessantly. And these assassins were not simply "Boxers," but Imperial soldiers, armed with repeating rifles and Krupp guns. In one day seven hundred heavy shot and shells were fired at the legations and tens of thousands of rounds of rifle ammunition. The regular force of the defenders amounted to but seventy-five marines and thirty-six fighting civilians, with some seventy or eighty armed volunteers to be called upon for special service in repelling attacks and fighting fires.