The exception is the Imperial City, inside whose sacred precincts it was firmly believed a foreigner might not set foot and not be stricken dead by the gods. This City within a city had defenses the allied armies were yet to come against. It lies on the north, inside the great wall. Just east of it, along the north wall, was the Foreign Legation, whose south and east bounds were lesser structures of brick and earth. Here all the foreigners and many native Christians had been shut in for six long weeks, with the infuriated Boxers hammering daily at their gates, mad for massacre. Here they had barricaded themselves with all the meager means available. They had fortified every gate with whatever might stop a bullet or check a cannon ball. They filled up the broken places in the walls with piles of earth; they dug deep trenches inside these walls, and inside these trenches they had built up heaps of earthworks. Daily they strengthened the weaker places and watched and prayed. No word from the big world outside seemingly could come to them--a little handful of the Lord's children, forgotten of Him, and locked dungeon deep from human aid. They had sent out a cry for help and had sent up prayers for deliverance. How far that cry had gone they could not know. Frowning walls besieged by enemies lay all around them. They could only look up and lift up helpless hands in prayer to the hot, unpitying August skies above them. Sickness stalked in over the walls. Hunger tore its way through the gates. Death swooped down, and sorrow seeped up, and despair lay in wait. But hope, and trust, and faith, and love failed not. They ate dogs and horses. They went half naked that they might make sand bags of their clothes for greater defense. They exhausted every means for protection and life, but they forgot not to pray. On this August night, while unknown to the besieged the Allied Armies encamped only six miles away, the reign of terror reached its height for the little Christian stronghold. The storm beat pitilessly on the starved and ragged captives. The rain softened the earthworks and the rivers of water in the trenches threatened to undermine the walls. Across these walls the incessant attack of cannon and roar of rifles was beyond anything the six weeks' siege had known, and only the power of Omnipotence could stay the bloody hands. So the long hours of the dreadful night dragged on. At length came daydawn. The storm had rolled away. A lull in the besieging guns gave the Legation a little rest of mind. Hungry and helpless, it waited the passing of another day. A silence seemed to fill the city and the wiser ones wondered anxiously what it might portend.