An ancient opened the portal, by and by, and we went in--through an alley-way to a court-yard, stone-flagged--and I almost gasped. Temples age-worn, old gardens tangled and unkempt and trees unpruned, dropped in terraces below us; and with them in terraces dropped, too, the notched gray walls that shut in the hushed silence of the spot from the noise of the outside world. Black-and-white magpies flew noiselessly about among the trees. Somewhere pigeons cooed and butterflies were fluttering everywhere. It was a deserted Confucian monastery--gone to wreck and ruin with only one priest to guard it, but untouched by the hand of Russian or Japanese. Both use temples only when they must, and it seems that Occidentals have much to learn from Tartar and heathen in reverence for the things that concern the universal soul. To escape that compound, we should have pitched our tents there, I suppose, had we been allowed. But it was a place of peaceful refuge open to us all. An Irishman had found it, and sharing the discovery we sat there and dreamed in silence until the after-glow was gone. ... It is pretty mournful this morning--rainy, muddy, dreary, dark. We have established a policing system--each man taking turn; but the mud in the court-yard deepens and the smells fade not at all. We have flies, mosquitoes, night-bugs that are homelike in species and scorpions that are not. Every man shakes his shoes in the morning for a hiding scorpion. A soldier brought in a dead one to-day, that yesterday had bitten him on the hand. He was bandaged to the shoulder, and but for quick treatment might have lost his arm. It can't be healthy in here, but only Dean Prior and two others have been ill. What a game Dean it is, by the way! He laughs at his sickness, laughs when that big white horse with the weak back goes down in a river or mud-hole with him, and never complains at all. I have never seen such forbearance and patience and good-humor among any set of men. If a man wakes up cross and in an ill-humor--that day is his. He may kick somebody's water-pail over the wall, storm at his servant, curse out the food, and be a general irritable nuisance; but the rest forbear, look down at their plates, and nobody says a word, for each knows that the next day may be his. This forbearance is one benefit anyhow that we are getting out of this campaign, which is a sad, sad waste thus far. But Reggie appears at the door. As he marches past us we rise and sing the Marseillaise; when he marches back, we sing it again, and that smile of his is reward enough. There is good news--_we_ are to go out on a reconnaissance to-morrow, ourselves. * * * * *