It was queer to see these great, fine-looking Indians, in khaki uniforms and huge picturesque red turbans, strutting around the compound, and as they entered right into our midst they all whooped a good English whoop. A little blond Englishwoman was so overcome at the relief really being here that she seized the first one she could get to and threw her arms around him and embraced him. The Sikh was dumbfounded at a _mem-sahib_ apparently so far forgetting all caste. It seemed odd that the word “relief” should have been personified in these Eastern and heathen-looking Sikhs, but it was all the more in keeping with this extraordinary siege in Peking that they should be the first on the scene to rescue us. At this wonderful moment the Chevalier de Melotte, Mrs. Squiers, and myself, without a word spoken, flew with common consent to the point in our lines down Legation Street where we knew we could see the entering columns. Cannons were booming in all directions, caused by the Powers trying to enter by the different gates, shells exploding and sniping everywhere. We took our stand at the bridge crossing the canal, from where we saw large quantities of soldiers, sometimes even cavalry, come through the Water Gate. We had scarcely caught from this rather exposed point a bird’s-eye view of it all, when a squad of Sikhs passed us with an officer of high rank, who turned out to be General Gaselee, riding in the midst of them. He jumped off his horse on seeing us, and showing on every inch of him the wear and tear of an eighty-mile midsummer relief march, he took our hands, and with tears in his eyes said, “Thank God, men, here are two women alive,” and he most reverently kissed Mrs. Squiers on the forehead. [Illustration: _Photo, Elliott & Fry_ GENERAL SIR ALFRED GASELEE ] It was so good to see him and meet him in this way. As soon as the despatch had arrived saying that General Gaselee was to be in command of the British forces, a smart-looking photograph of him that someone had cut from a magazine had been pinned on the Bell Tower, and it was so smart-looking, and his appearance so correct, that one of necessity lost interest in his personality; and now to see him thus—the military martinet all lost in this big-hearted, kindly man, who was almost crying because we were alive! A short time before meeting us, on his line of march, he saw poor Père Dosio’s head stuck on the end of a pole, where the Chinese had placed it, and General Gaselee feared that this head might be but the beginning of a series of Europeans similarly treated. We had considered the Italian priest so quiet and docile that he was not restrained at all, and yesterday he quietly wandered out into the Chinese lines, and undoubtedly he was killed before they knew his mind was gone, although at this stage the Chinese, I expect, were all too ferocious to have spared him even had they known of his dementia.