At dawn, on the 18th of July, we were roused by the sound of rifles and the hurrying feet of armed men. A dense mist lay over the valley of Lien-chen-kwan, and out of the darkness beyond came the solemn booming of volleys. The little stone house on the other side of the river slept soundly. Nothing of importance could be happening as long as the General was within those silent walls. We went back to our tents, but not to slumber. Minutes passed and still the volleys echoed among the cloud-capped hills. The little house woke with a start. Officers dropped in by twos and threes; orderlies came and went, and the hitching posts at the door held a mob of screaming horses. Something more than an affair of outposts? We dressed and made ready to ride to the front. But the Japanese were as careful of us as if they were our mothers. They had set their faces firmly against risk on our part. “You must wait,” said our mentor, and he meant it this time. So we waited, booted and spurred--waited and watched troops hastening forward, wiping the sweat from their brows as they ran: waited and watched ammunition wagons rumble by: waited and heard the volleys drowned in the roar of artillery, sharp and solemn as thunder peals among the mountains. To our impatience was the same answer: “You must wait.” The crowd before the little house grew. Foreign _attachés_, eager for their first battle, came riding up. For them was the same order: “Wait.” Importunity avails not with a Staff officer whom you must approach through an interpreter. Near and more near boomed the cannons. They knocked at our very door. But the Staff officer was unmoved. “You must wait.” Chinese women and girls seized their bundles and fled into the mountain whence they had come after the retreat of the Russians--they did not like the soldiers of the Czar. In the little house over the river orderlies packed up and prepared for a flitting. Was it so serious as that? A telegraph section crossed the stream and ran a wire up the hill where three men stood like statues in the mist. We breakfasted and waited and watched more soldiers mopping their foreheads as they doubled past and more ammunition wagons rolling to the front. At last came release, and at a canter we started for the scene of action, Mou-tien-ling once more.