When Beg Bacha returned post haste to Kashgar, to encounter the Kirghiz, we said that Sadic Beg fled to the Kizil Yart; but he did not remain there long, for soon we find him back again at the capital in high favour with the Ameer, with whom he had come to terms. His Kirghiz followers were taken into the pay of the state, and just as this alliance had been struck up, tidings came of events that made that alliance, however futile and insignificant, a matter of the first necessity, both to Kirghiz and Kashgar. The Chinese army was at last advancing. The danger that had for five months been hanging in suspense over the devoted heads of a Mussulman people was close upon them. The long-feared and long-expected Khitay were drawing nigh to the capital, in irresistible strength; and the apprehensions of a cowed people made them know, too surely, that their end was at hand. The dissensions among the people themselves, the discord in the ruling house, and the dissentient elements in every effort towards unity, had all operated in favour of the invader. While the Chinese had plotted and prepared in the deliberate manner of a great nation, the people of Kashgar had entered into cabals and schemes of party tactics that were well nigh ludicrous. And all the time that the sap of their vigour was being expended, the Chinese generals were drawing the noose more closely together that was to strangle the newly erected state beyond all chance of recovery. It would almost seem as if the Kashgari and their rulers had recovered from their first shock at the Chinese invasion, and were becoming reconciled to their presence east of Korla, when they experienced a second, more severe, and more lasting shock, in the announcement that the Chinese were again advancing. Their brief contentment passed away, and all their old terror revived in tenfold force. Hope died within their bosoms, and the resignation of despair only nerved them to bear a fate which their own valour should have striven to avert. It is time for us now to return to the Chinese army, and to follow its decisive operations.