Another problem was the getting to the concessions. It was not the best of times for a girl to walk the highway alone. To be sure, she had come safely through from the junk; but it had not been far, and she hadn't had to approach a native army. She decided to wait an hour or so, until the plunderers there in the grove should be fully drunk; then, if at the moment it seemed the thing, to slip out and make a try for it. And then, a little later, evidently from the road outside the wall, came a new sort of confused sounds; music, of flageolets and strings, and falsetto voices, and with it a low-pitched babel of many tongues. Whoever these new folk might be, they appeared to be turning in at the open gate. The music stopped abruptly, in a low whine of discord, and the talk rose in pitch. Over the brick screen appeared banners moving jerkily about, dipping and rising, as if in the hands of agitated persons below; a black banner, bearing in its center the triple imperial emblems of the Sun, the other two yellow, one blazoning the familiar dragon, the other a phoenix. A few banner men appeared peeping cautiously about the screen; Manchu soldiers of the old effete army, bearing short rifles. They came on, cautiously into the park, joined in a moment by others. An officer with a queue and an old-fashioned sword and a military cap in place of a turban followed and, forming them into a ragged column of fours, marched them over the marble bridges and into the grove, where they disappeared from view. Then a gorgeously colored sedan chair came swaying in, carried by many bearers walking under stout bamboo cross-poles. Others, in the more elaborate dress of officials, walked beside and behind it. Then came more soldiers, who straggled informally about, some even dropping on the gravel to rest their evidently weary bodies. The chair was opened in front and a tall fat man stepped rather pompously out, wearing a robe of rose and blue and the brightly embroidered insignia and button of a mandarin of the fourth rank. At once a servant stepped forward with a huge umbrella which he opened and held over the fat man. And then they waited, all of them, standing or lying about and talking in excited groups. Several of the officials hurried back around the screen as if to examine the deserted apartments just within the gate, and shortly returned with much to say in their musical singsong.... An officer espied the body of Connor lying on the steps of the pavilion, and came with others, excitedly, to the foot of the steps. The key of the confused talk rose at once. There was an excited conference of many ranks about the tall fat man under the umbrella.