During 1899 there was a notable relaxation of the hard and ceaseless pressure upon China which governments, capitalists and speculators had been keeping up of late, in demands more or less peremptory for harbor leases, settlement grounds, railway franchises, mining privileges, and naval, military and commercial advantages of every possible sort. But the irritation of the country under the bullying and "nagging" of the treatment it had received from the European nations revealed itself in increasing outbreaks of popular hostility to foreigners; and these called out threats and demands, for indemnity and punishment, which were made, as a rule, in the truculent tone that had become habitual to western diplomacy in dealing with the people of the East. It was a tone which the Chinese provoked, by the childish evasions and treacherous deceptions with which their officials tried to baffle the demands made on them; but it gave no less offense, and is no less plainly to be counted among the causes of what afterwards occurred. Throughout most of the year, the British Legation at Peking and the Consulate at Chungking were busied in obtaining satisfaction for the murder of Mr. Fleming, a missionary in the China Inland Mission, stationed at Pang Hai, near Kwei-Yang. He had been killed and the mission looted in November, 1898. The Chinese authorities claimed that he had been killed by a band of rebels. The British Consul investigated and became convinced that the missionary had been the victim of a deliberate plot, directed by the headman of the village of Chung An Chiang, where the murder occurred, and connived at by the military official Liu. The Chinese government, yielding to this conviction, caused two of the murderers to be executed, degraded and exiled all of the local officials who were involved in the crime, except the headman, and paid an indemnity of $30,000. But the headman escaped, and it was claimed by the governor of the province that he could not be found. The British authorities found evidence that he was being shielded by the governor, and demanded the dismissal of the governor, which was persistently refused. Finally, in October, 1899, the guilty headman was hunted down.