Afterwards ascertained to be the Japanese trying to drive the Chinese from the Eastern Gate in order to enter the city. We have all become like deaf people, and to make people hear we have to seize them by the shoulders and bellow into their ears. We don’t quite know whether the Chinese will occupy themselves entirely with the advancing troops, or whether our fortified lines will be swept away by them in a last attempt on us before the allies thunder in to our rescue. Opinions vary; every barricade is doubly manned, as they have been, in fact, for the last two nights. The Russians, English, and Americans finally succeeded in their attack on the south-eastern Wall, and entered the Chinese city almost simultaneously, marching along the southern Wall of the Imperial City towards the Water Gate, the Ch’ien Men Gate, and the Ha Ta Men Gate. The commanders received a cipher despatch from Sir Claude Macdonald advising them to enter the Imperial City by the Water Gate, as we held that portion of the Wall, and would be able to assist them in entering at that place. At about half-past three I was debating with my maid whether I should or should not go over to the American Legation and take the cheerful bath which I had been indulging in each day lately. Owing to the half-armistice existing, the early afternoon hours were fairly safe ones in which to move about the lines, and I was about to start with bathing paraphernalia and the little maid, when my inner consciousness was struck by something unusual happening out in the compound. I tingled all over, for my instinct had told me the troops had come. Running to the old tennis-court, the only open space, I found everybody flying in the same direction. There were about two hundred Sikhs. They had entered Peking by the Water Gate, or what one should really call a drain, which allows the now dried-up water in the canal egress under the Tartar Wall. It is by this that our messengers have gone out and come in, and it is the route Mr. Squiers urged in his letter on both M^cCalla and Chaffee as being the only way by which troops could penetrate right into the heart of our lines without having to take any big gate of the Tartar city. These Sikhs came in this way, and they were the first to warm our hearts with the knowledge that this horrible siege is over.