This was the situation up to the fateful month of June, 1900. Rumours of impending trouble were numerous, but missionaries in China become accustomed to threatening placards and slanderous reports. Though it was evident that the opposition was becoming more bitter, the missionaries did not feel that they would be justified in abandoning their work. Several, however, were temporarily absent for other reasons. Of the Congregational missionaries, Dr. and Mrs. Noble and Mrs. Pitkin were on furlough in America and Mr. and Mrs. Ewing were spending a few weeks at the seaside resort, Pei-tai-ho, so that Mr. Pitkin, Miss Morrill and Miss Gould were the only ones left at the station. Of the Presbyterian missionaries Mr. and Mrs. Miller were also at Pei-tai-ho, Mrs. Lowrie had sailed for America the 26th of May, and Mr. Lowrie, who had accompanied her to Shanghai, was at Tien-tsin on his way back to Paoting-fu. The missionaries remaining at the station were thus five,--Dr. Taylor, Mr. and Mrs. Simcox and their three children, and Dr. and Mrs. Hodge. The China Inland forwarding agent, Mr. Bagnall, with his wife and little girl, was in his house south of the city wall near the American Board compound, and with him was the Rev. William Cooper, who was on his way to Shanghai after a visit to the Shan-si Mission and whose family was then at Chefoo. It is impossible to ascertain all the details of the massacre. None of the foreigners live to tell the painful story. No other foreigners reached Paoting-fu until the arrival of the military expedition in October, three and a half months later. The Chinese who had participated in the massacre were then in hiding. Spectators were afraid to talk lest they, too, might be held guilty. Most of the Chinese Christians who had been with the missionaries were killed, while others were so panic- stricken that they could remember only the particular scenes with which they were directly connected. Moreover, in those three and a half months such battles and national commotions had occurred, including the capture of Peking and the flight of the Emperor, that the people of Paoting-fu had half forgotten the murder of a few missionaries in June. In these circumstances, full information will probably never be obtained, though additional facts may yet turn up from time to time. But from all that can be learned, and from the piecing together of the scattered fragments of information carefully collected by Mr. Lowrie, who accompanied the expedition, it appears that Thursday, June 28th, several Chinese young men who had been studying medicine under Dr. Taylor came to him at the city dispensary, warned him of the impending danger and urged him to leave. When he refused they besought him to yield, and though several of them were not Christians, so strong was their attachment to their teacher that they shed tears.