The hypocrite Chang bent over me as I was examining, and asked in a voice of pretended sympathy: “Is he badly hurt? Can he recover? And how long will he be ill?” to which I replied: “Not badly hurt; he will recover; and I will guarantee he is all right day after to-morrow if you will send him at once to my railroad hospital at Fengtai.” I said this, thinking that the British minister in Peking, Sir Claude MacDonald, might be glad to get hold of these men for proper punishment, and that if they were in the hospital at Fengtai they could easily be obtained; otherwise I would have ordered this man to be dismissed at once as shamming. The second man also pretended to be much worse off than he really was, but he did in fact have a small bullet-wound in his shoulder, from which I extracted with forceps a fragment of blue cotton cloth, and then sent him also to the hospital, predicting his recovery within ten days. General Chang thanked me for my interest, and promised to reward me for my services when the men recovered; then, nodding coolly to Governor Hu, he and his staff marched out of the inn and left us, and allowed a subordinate to escort us to the special train that brought us down, which was as great a lack of courtesy and positive insult as he could give to the Empress Dowager’s high commissioner. Our return journey was without incident. The city gates were open awaiting us, and were closed immediately upon our entrance. Governor Hu immediately memorialized the throne, stating the result of his inquiries, reported the impudence of Colonel Chao, and made the request that he be turned over to the Board of Punishments for a penalty. The Empress acknowledged the memorial, and she decided to deprive Colonel Chao of one step in rank, degrading him to a major. This appeared in an edict at once; at the same time she commended Hu for his promptness and general ability. But, alas for Governor Hu! General Tung Fu Hsiang, the man who was to prove the curse of China, was unacquainted with all these circumstances, and had yet to be heard from. This man had obtained his reputation first as a brigand, and afterward as a leader of Her Majesty’s army in putting down a rather formidable rebellion of the Mohammedans in his own province of Kansu. Bold, cruel, and unscrupulous, he had murdered his own provincials, who were but poorly armed and without military discipline, in a most ruthless manner, and had not only suppressed the uprising, but nearly exterminated the rebels. [Illustration: A temple in the Summer Palace grounds] His fame spread far and wide as a wonderful general, so that when the Empress again assumed power by forcibly seizing the throne from the weak but good-intentioned Kuang Hsu, she decided at once to bring this man Tung and his Kansu ruffians to Peking to assist her in maintaining her authority against all comers. It was en route to Peking that his advance corps, under General Chang, had the trouble at Lukouch’iao.