We now held a council of war. What should we do--push on or go back? It seemed highly dangerous, but suddenly making up my mind, I cut short all deliberations and ordered an advance. To feel for the enemy, to get in touch with the enemy at all costs, and to scratch him if possible, is evidently the scout's duty, even when the scout is but a siege amateur, with broken trousers, a mud-stained shirt and a battered rifle. But we must make ourselves secure. We bolted the big gates behind us; we sweatily piled up sufficient bricks to make its opening a matter of minutes for an enemy's hand, and then we once again trotted forward. This time we were irrevocably inside the Legation, and separated, perhaps, for good and all from our own people.... We rapidly covered the ground until we reached the extreme eastern corner of the vast enclosing Legation wall. Very recently there had been some one just here for a fire was still smouldering on the ground, and in some earthenware bowls there was some cold rice. We must see what was beyond.... The big recruit lent me his broad shoulder, and with some struggling I caught the edge of an outhouse roof and hitched myself astride of the main wall. Still nothing to be seen except ruined and battered houses; again not a soul, not a dog, not a vestige of life. The others came up, too, and we rapidly improvised a ladder to get down the other side and back again if necessary. We were busily at work completing these preparations when suddenly the big recruit grabbed me unceremoniously by the shoulder and uttered a single word in a hoarse tone of excitement. "Look," he said; "look!" I looked, and far down the street below us towards where lay the Palace and the Imperial city, I saw a figure rapidly moving. A pair of binoculars were pulled out and brought to bear. It was a Chinese soldier! We flattened ourselves on the top of the wall like so many crawling snails, pushed out our rifles in front of us, and at four hundred yards we most foolishly opened on the man. By instinct and experience, we had all learned much in two months; yet in a moment of excitement everything was being rapidly unlearned.... It takes some shooting to get home on a flickering figure, dodging along a street with irregular lines, at that range, and I confess we drew no blood. But still loophole shooting must spoil open-air work, otherwise at that range.... The man had paused irresolutely as the stream of bullets had hissed past him, and had then run violently into a doorway. Presently, as we intently watched, his head emerged, then his whole body; and, finally dodging quickly in and out, he gained a cross-road and disappeared. What did this mean?