"I will not wait while the Boxers massacre the helpless Christians. Stay here or go back to your own countries, as you please. My army will go on to Peking, if it must go alone." And his will prevailed. Followed then a memorable march, with the Stars and Stripes ever leading the line. The strength of the force was thirteen thousand now and one thousand of these fell by the way before the end of the journey. After Yang-Tsun, for the only time in this ten days' campaign, the soldiers undressed and bathed themselves like Christians in the unchristian Peiho, and on the next day, which was the Sabbath, they listened to the military chapel service. Six days they forged onward with the same cruel heat, and scalding air, and alkali dust, and poison water, over dreary plains, through deserted villages, twenty, twenty-five, and even thirty miles a day, they pushed on toward the Chinese capital. And ever before them the Boxers slowly receded, stinging grievously as they moved. Sure were they that at last only dire calamity could await that slender column moving across the plains, led under a flag of red, white, and blue, with bands ever playing _The Star-Spangled Banner_, while from line on line rolled out that weird battle cry of "Rock Chalk! Jay Hawk! K U!" Sure were they that this stubborn little bands of soldiers foolishly following the receding Boxer must at last crush itself like dead-ripe fruit against the ancient and invincible walls of Peking. On the evening of the sixth day from Yang-Tsun the twelve thousand men of the Allied Armies, flower of the world's soldiery, stumbled into camp with their outposts in sight of the great walls of the City of Peking. This had been the longest and hottest of all the days, with the weariest length of march. A great storm cloud was rising in the west and the air hung hot and still before it. Thaine Aydelot and his comrades threw themselves down, too exhausted to care for what might happen next. "This is the hottest day I ever knew," declared McLearn wearily, as he lay prone on the ground looking up at the hot sky with unblinking eyes. "I reckon you never hit the National pike on an August day, out between Green Castle and Terre Haute down in Indianny," Binford suggested. "Nor St. Marys-by-the-Kaw," Boehringer, a Kansas man, added. "There's where you get real summery weather." "Oh, kill him, Aydelot, he's worse than a Boxer. Don't you know I'm from Boston originally, which is only a State of Mind?" Goodrich urged. "No matter what state you are from originally, you are in China now, which is in a state of insurrection that we must get ready for a state of resurrection tomorrow. What are you thinking about, T. Aydelot? You look like Moses and the prophets." McLearn half turned over with the question. Thaine, who was lying on his side, supporting his head on his hand, quoted softly: