“Then came a second cart, and in it rode an old gentleman who climbed out and walked alone to the cleared space in the middle of the yard. He was bent and feeble, but he never flinched, and his dignity and rank stood out as plain as print. A guard said something to him, and he took off his long, fur-trimmed coat and knelt on the filthy flagging and the wind whirled the dust in his face. He knelt there, waiting, for a long time, motionless except when he put his hand to his throat and pulled his collar around it to keep off the wind. “A pompous official read the death sentence, but that wrinkled old face showed never a trace of emotion. Then a pair of the executioner’s understrappers leaped on the old gentleman like wild-cats. One jumped on his back and drove his knees into him, while the other tied a bit of cord to the end of the trailing queue and yanked forward with all his might. It stretched the old man’s neck like a turtle’s. Then the big Manchu with the bloody apron raised his straight-edged sword and it fell like a flash of light. The head flew off and bounced into the lap of the fellow that was tugging at the queue.” McDougal paused for a gulp of brandy. His voice was unsteady as he resumed: “I guess my nerves were none too good. A man can’t go boozing up and down the coast of the Orient for a dozen years without paying the price. That sight was too much for me. I had to take a drink, and then some more, to forget it. The old man was so patient and helpless, his head bounced off like an apple; and what broke me up worst of all was seeing him pull that coat up around his throat so he wouldn’t catch cold--up around his throat, mind you. It was a little thing, but, my God, what did it matter if he caught cold? And the way they hauled and yanked him about before his neck was--well, I wish I hadn’t seen it. “Once started, the old thirst took hold of me and I wandered down the coast until I came to, sick and broke, in a dirty Chinese tea-house in Che-Foo. There I lay until one day there came from the street a long, booming cry that crashed through the high-pitched clatter of the crowd like surf on a granite shore. By Jove! it stirred me like a battle-chant. It sounded again and again. I knew it must be a pedler shouting his wares, you understand, but it surged into my poor sick brain as if it was meant for me. It was buoyant, big, telling me to take heart in the last ditch. The words were Chinese, of course, but the odd thing about it was that they came to me precisely as though this great, deep voice was booming in English: ‘_Throw-w all-l regrets away-y._’