His host had now become cringingly polite. Bob questioned him, partly by signs, partly by means of his few words of Japanese, regarding the direction of Seng-cheng and the Pekin road. The former, he learnt, was 70 li (about 21 miles) over the hills, the latter 10 li due east. Thinking over the situation, he resolved to make boldly for the road, which he knew led direct to Ping-yang, and on reaching it to travel by night and rest in hiding during the day. Having made a hearty meal, with a moderate potation of a thin rice beer which he found very refreshing, he rose to leave, and offered the Korean a yen, which, as prices go in the country, was probably four times the value of what he and his horse had consumed. The man, with many bows and protestations, refused to accept payment. Bob insisted, the Korean resisted, and, pointing to a wooden pillow-block on the floor and a quilt hanging on a peg, tried to persuade his visitor to stay the night. This invitation was politely declined, whereupon the Korean in his turn became insistent, so that Bob grew suspicious. The man’s refusal to accept money was no doubt an attempt to ingratiate himself with the Cossack patrol to which he supposed Bob belonged; his pressing invitation was capable of a less amicable explanation. Bob in his guise as a Cossack would never think of spending the night alone in a Korean village; if he fell asleep he might never awaken. Shaking his head resolutely, he made signs that he wished the remains of his meal to be put up for him in one of the lacquer boxes he saw in the room. This having been done with manifest reluctance by his host, he moved forward his horse, the Korean following him still with pressing entreaty. All the time that Bob was bundling up a supply of fodder for his horse the man stood jabbering at his side, but he withstood these persevering efforts to detain him, and was just about to mount his horse, when he saw dimly in the dusk, at the end of the street by which he had entered the village, a body of men whom even in the distance he recognized by their quaint caps and baggy clothes as Korean infantry. Instantly he vaulted into the saddle. At the same moment he heard the bang-bang of rifles and a volley of shouts. His fat host flung himself flat on his face, and Bob galloped up the street, smiling at the ineffectiveness of the Koreans’ aim, and wondering how long it would take them to reload. At a turn of the street, even more to their surprise than to his own, he came plump upon another body of Koreans marching in no great order in the opposite direction. Evidently a clumsy attempt had been made to surround him. There was no alternative. He dashed straight at this new body; they scurried like rabbits to the sides of the road, yelling with fright, and by the time they had recovered sufficiently to remember that they were soldiers of the emperor, Bob was out of sight.