Three days after I arrived, a shot was fired at me from the window of an empty house in the suburbs. The police investigated that matter, but they never knew who fired the shot. I knew without investigation. A week later, returning to my hotel after dark, I was very cleverly lariated and three-parts strangled by two natives, one of them I fancy a Tibetan, working from a dark doorway; and two days after that, as I walked in broad daylight down a crowded street in the Chinese city, a knife whizzed past my ear and buried itself an inch deep in a pillar of hard wood. From that time onward attempts on my life were frequent. I drew more and more into seclusion, keeping to my rooms at the hotel for days together, yet even here I wasn't safe. One day, when lunch was brought up to me--I never used the public rooms for meals--I noticed as I shook some cayenne pepper from the caster that the stuff was curiously light in tint. Now since my return I had often dreamed of Hellas both by night and day, and before long it became too obvious to escape remark that shortly after these dreams I was invariably in danger from my enemies. Coincidence, or some subtle warning conveyed to me from that mysterious land beyond the snows--I've no time to discuss the point now; but the fact remains that on the night before I detected that curious pallor about the cayenne pepper, I had dreamed of Hellas very vividly indeed. I called up the manager, and had the stuff analysed. The chemist reported a rare and very deadly alkaloid, the name of which I have forgotten. The manager of the hotel was greatly distressed. He investigated the business thoroughly, but without discovering any hint as to how the poison could have been introduced into my private pepper-caster. The chef and all the servants had been with him a long time, bore excellent characters, and denied all knowledge of the attempted poisoning. The manager at last offered me a solatium to say nothing of the affair. I refused his money, of course, and wouldn't even let him sack the cook, but that night, alone over a briar, I thought out the whole position. By midnight I had come to a pretty far-reaching decision--no less than to write a full and accurate account of my visit to the lost land of Hellas. My reason for doing this was simply that I was unwilling my secret should die with me. That I must die before long, I was fully convinced. My enemies had made it quite clear to me by this time that they would only be satisfied with my death. I might--though this is doubtful--prolong the hunt by fleeing from China, but that I declined to do. The great Yellow Land which has been the subject of my life-work has been my home for many years now. I have few friends in it, but none at all outside, and there is at this moment, I believe, no relative of mine left living. I would stay where I was, and pray that time might be left me to complete the record.