He curtly declared, “They are in camp half a mile away, and he can go and see them if he wants to.” “Will you go?” inquired Hu. “Yes, if you will go with me,” I replied, not caring to venture alone into the hostile camp, especially after what I had seen of the temper of their leaders; but I added, “I think it would be much better to have them brought here.” “Yes, yes, that is better,” said Hu; but General Chang interrupted him by saying: “Impossible! they are too ill to be moved, and on this cold day would surely take cold and die.” “Have them well wrapped up and brought quickly,” said Hu, without paying attention to the interruption, “for it is getting late, and although I have ordered the city gates not to close until our return to Peking, I am anxious to avoid keeping them open any later than necessary.” General Chang then strode across the room to the door opening into the court, where upwards of three hundred of his men were standing packed like sardines, listening to everything we had been saying, as Chinese custom is, and shouted out: “Bring the two wounded men in here.” Now all of the men had seen Governor Hu snubbed, had heard Colonel Chao revile him and his railroads, and had heard their general say the men would die if brought out in the cold; so, supposing they were to act in a similar way, they, upon receiving this order, held a confab, and a very noisy confab, too, among themselves for a few moments before replying. As I watched Governor Hu’s face grow pale as the commotion increased, I felt that we were in real danger right in the midst of the officers, and that my previous view that I could insure my own safety by threatening Hu’s life would avail nothing, as they hated him as much if not more than myself. I could plainly see that I must change my man, and make the general my target if the necessity arose. Then a voice shouted out from the soldiers almost the exact words of the general. “They cannot be brought here; the exposure would kill them.” Chang looked at Hu to see what effect this had upon him, but Hu was no coward, and calmly replied: “They must be brought if it kills them; by Her Majesty’s commission, I demand it.” The general was bluffing; he sullenly gave in. “Bring those men at once, dead or alive, you scoundrels,” he shouted stentoriously, “and in a hurry, too!” “Aye, aye,” responded a hundred throats, and a number of men left the courtyard at once. The camp must have been some distance away, for it was over half an hour and nearly candle-lighting time before the two men, each carried on a litter on the shoulders of six men, were brought in. The first man was covered up in blankets, and pretended to be unconscious; but he proved to have no fever, had a slow pulse, and absolutely no wound but a scratch at the lower end of his right shoulder-blade, which might have been made by a finger-nail, or possibly by a pistol-ball grazing the skin.