Any other British correspondent would have hailed the outcast with the old welcome, notwithstanding the race-challenge which his appearance involved. On the morning he left Tokyo, five months before, Bingley had also promised Miss Cardinegh to carry the news of her father’s confession and death to Routledge, if he should be the first to find him. It did not occur to Bingley now, isolated as he had been so long, that this was the first time Routledge had been seen. Moreover, in their last meeting, at the Army and Navy ball, there had been a brief but bitter passage of words. Bingley was not the man to make an overture when there was a chance of its being repelled. Finally, the sudden discovery of a trained man, with carnage behind and the cable ahead, was a juggernaut which crushed the life from every other thought in his brain. Routledge found his horses in excellent condition. The Chinese whom he had brought from Pingyang had proved faithful before, but with all the natives, not alone the banditti and river-thieves, emboldened by the war, the safe holding of his property was a joy indeed. At seven in the evening, the sky black with gathering storm, he left his servant, rich in _taels_ and blessings, and turned westward along the Taitse river-road. This was neither the best nor the shortest way, but Routledge preferred to be impeded by ruts, even by chasms, than by Japanese sentries. With Bingley’s full panoply of credentials it would have been different. Sixty-five miles to ride, a river to cross, an audience with Consul Milner, a train to catch, to say nothing of enforced delays by the possible interest of the Japanese in his movements--all in fourteen hours. As Bingley conjectured, the chance meeting had hastened the plan of Routledge. He had intended to reach Wangcheng the following day, but by no means in time for the morning train; in fact, he had determined to tarry at the American consulate until the decision from the battle should come in. Wangcheng had changed hands since his last call at the port, but he counted on the wise and winning American to be as finely appreciated by the Japanese as he had been by the Russians. Milner would get the returns from the battle almost as soon as the Japanese commander at the base. The one word _victory_ or _defeat_, and a line covering the incidental strategic cause, was all that Routledge needed for a startling story. He had mastered the field, and Oku had supplied a rainbow of pigments.