Chapter III: Part 3

Now the celebration programme would have been halting and inadequate if the Assistant Manager of the Yale Navy had not hurried to New Haven on an earlier train. He had been in the car with John Hastings, and took it for granted that the sweet-faced woman of the silvery hair must be his mother. He was plunging through the crowd on the stone steps, trying to rescue the oarsmen in order to head them toward the banquet hall, when beneath the are light on the corner, a little way out of the tumult, he saw the timid lady for whom he had felt much sympathy. The Assistant Manager was ably fitted for his official task of looking after details, because he fairly boiled over with initiative, and with him to think was to act, as the powder speeds the bullet. He dashed across to Mrs. Hastings, and said, with a hurried and apologetic bow:

"Beg pardon, but this is Jack Hastings' mother, are you not? Yes, thank you, I was sure of it. It may seem presumptuous, but I have heard lots about you, and Jack has convinced me that you are the finest mother in the world, bar one. I have been so infern--so very busy since I got in town from New London, that I have had no time to look up Jack. We want him at the dinner, everybody does, and we want you just as much. In fact, you must be my special guest, and hear the speeches, anyhow, if you won't stay any longer. Jack's asleep, is he? Well, we'll wake him up, all right."

The alarmed little mother tried to protest several things at once. Jack had sworn he would not go to the dinner, and that he would break the neck of the man who should try to rout him out. Of course, Jack would not do that really, but he was all worn out and needed the rest. Please not to disturb him, and she would not dream of going without him, and she did not want to go at all. Her earnestness was almost tearful, but the Assistant Manager, who had heard perhaps the first ten words, darted off and was back with two young men whose fists were full of cannon crackers. He had each fast by the coat-collar, and shoving them into the foreground like a pair of marionettes, he breathlessly blurted:

"Mrs. Hastings, may I present Mr. Stower and Mr. 'Stuffy' Barlow, both Seniors, highly dignified and proper persons? This is Jack Hastings' mother. You are to escort Mrs. Hastings down to Harmonium Hall, and see that she has a nice seat in the gallery or near the door. No trouble at all, Mrs. Hastings, I assure you. Awfully glad to have had the honor of meeting you. Good-bye. I'll run over to Jack's room and drag him down there in five minutes."

Mrs. Hastings had all the sensations of being kidnapped. She tried to protest, even to resist, but was like a leaf caught up in a torrent, as Messrs. Barlow and Stower, both talking at once, handed her politely but firmly into the depths of a hack, climbed in after her and slammed the door.

Almost in a twinkling, as it seemed to the agitated mother, she was being ushered carefully into a small music gallery overlooking the banquet floor, where from a shadowy corner she could overlook the festivities in semi-seclusion. She waited only until her genial abductors were out of sight, and then slipped furtively toward the stairs, intending, of course, to return to her boy if he did not appear forthwith. Uneasy and fluttering, she was also keenly interested, for had not John placed this picture before her, and what it had meant to him in other years? He met her at the top of the stairway, looking sheepish and alarmed. She tried to explain, but he cut her short with a laugh:

"I know all about it, Little Mother. You fell a victim to the wiles of a terrible set of villains. You couldn't help yourself. Neither could I, when I heard how you had been spirited away. Now you are going to stay and see the fun, aren't you?"

She tried to persuade him to leave her and take his seat with the celebrants.

"No, I have lost my seat," said he, with the old shadow on his face. "I don't belong there any more.... I don't want to be seen. But the fellows promised not to give me away. It is pretty nervy for me to come at all. But I am here only to escort you."

She took his hand and held it while they sat well back in a corner of the gallery and watched the company trooping in. To the young oarsmen, so clean-cut and strong, tired but happy, all their woes and fears forgotten, this was their day of days. In a long row were seated the University eight, the substitutes, and the Freshman crew, which had also won its race. At the head of the table was "Big Bill" Hall, stout oarsman of thirty years ago, now a much stouter citizen. The captain of the crew was at his right, and at his left hand the beaming Head Coach, burned as black as any Indian. In another group were the younger coaches, most of them old strokes and captains, and mighty men at Yale in their time. Other oarsmen of other days were welcomed, regardless of the formality of invitation. Perhaps forty men around the board had known the test of the four-mile course, brothers of the oar through nearly two generations of rowing history.

The outcast was able to keep his poise until the Glee Club quartette rose to sing, by special request of the Head Coach, "Jolly Boating Weather." The first tenor had a sweet and sympathetic voice, and he had heard the story of the singing of this song on the float just before the race, wherefore he did the verses uncommonly well.

Then the old fellows, some with grizzled thatches, and some with thatches scant and thin, had their innings and pounded the table to emphasize their harmonious declaration that

"Twenty years hence such weather
Will tempt us from office stools.
We may be slow on the feather,
And seem to the boys old fools,
But we'll still swing together----"

The song carried to Hastings was the last straw to break the endurance which had pulled him through the long, long day. He did not want his mother to see his quivering lip, and he thought she would not perceive that he was near to breaking down. Did she know? Why, she felt his emotion in the hand she clasped tighter than before, she read his thoughts in the very beat of his pulse, and when he whispered that he must have caught a cold in the head because he was getting an attack of sniffles, she needed no words to enlighten her understanding. If his tears were those of a boy, then she thanked God she was childish enough to feel with him at every step and turn of the way that was blocked by the biggest sorrow of his life. She asked him whether he would like to go home. He shook his head and said that he would stick it through to the end.

VIII

Speeches were in order, and the presiding alumnus hove himself out of his chair, and hammered the table with the rudder of the winning shell, thoughtfully lifted and provided by the able Assistant Manager. There were cheers for "Big Bill" Hall, of the '73 crew, more cheers for Yale, and before the uproar was quiet his great voice rose above it as he began to speak. Presiding Judge of the Supreme Court of a New England State when at home, he was all a Yale man come back to his own upon such occasions as this, and because Yale men loved him they called him "Big Bill."

"When we get into the big world beyond the campus," he began, "it may seem to some that this intensity of purpose, this absorption in a sport, were childish, yet we do not regret those convictions, we are proud of them, for these same qualities make for manhood in the larger duties of a wider horizon. And, after all, are the things for which we are striving in after years any more worth while? Are they always sweetened and uplifted by so much devotion, unselfishness, loyalty, and singleness of purpose? Are they thrilled by as fine a spirit of manliness? We hear it said that the old Yale spirit is losing its savor, that men are working for themselves rather than for the college, that they hold in light esteem things that were sacred and vital to us. I do not believe these criticisms are true.

"The young man I wished most to see is not here to-night. He would not come to help us celebrate a victory over an ancient and honorable foe. He believes that he has lost the respect of his comrades and that he has been proven a failure. For three years he has been a University oar. This season he could not keep his weight down to the limit of former years, he found that he could not keep up with the eight--although he tried as never before--and he was not helping the crew. The day came when he had to be removed, and he experienced as bitter disappointment as could befall a young man of spirit and pluck. The coaches and captain expected that he would throw up training, leave the Quarters and go home. It was the natural thing to do, because he was cut to the soul, and it was like attending his own funeral services to hang around the place.

"Without a word he slipped into the place of a substitute, and did a substitute's work as long as there was need of it. I venture to say that he would have scrubbed out the boathouse if it would have been of service to the crew. Do you know why he took this stand? Not because he did not care, but because he cared so much. When he offered to help as a substitute he said:

"'If I can help the Yale shell to go faster by being out of it, I am glad of it. That is what I am rowing for. And if I can be of any use as a substitute, why, that is what I am here for, too. It is all for Yale, isn't it?'

"He did not know that he was overheard. It was not meant to be overheard. But it expressed his whole attitude, and he stood by it to the end. You youngsters who licked Harvard to-day deserve all the praise and rejoicing that comes to you. We are all proud of you, and we know how hard and well you have worked. But while you are the heroes of this celebration, _the_ hero did not row with you. His name is 'Jack' Hastings, the man who was glad to help a Yale crew go faster by getting out of it.

"And when you hear it said that the Yale spirit is dying out, I want you to think of that remark. That man absorbed the spirit right here that made him take that view as a matter of course. It was because he did not think of anything else to be done under the circumstances that he epitomized the spirit that will make this old place great as long as it stands. Endowments and imposing buildings can never breed that spirit. It grows and blossoms as the fruitage of many generations of tradition, and when Yale loses it, she is become an empty shell, a diploma factory, and no longer a nursery of the right kind of manhood needed in this country.

"Three long cheers for 'Jack' Hastings, who, if he did not help to win this race, will help to win races long after he is gone from the campus world; and so long as his words are remembered Yale men on football field, on track and diamond, and on the dear old Thames will feel their inspiration. Are you ready?"

The men rose the length of the table and shouted, with napkins waved on high. Before the last "rah, rah, rah, Hastings, Hastings, Hastings," subsided, the Assistant Manager had become red in the face and exceedingly uneasy. He wrestled with a weighty ethical problem, because while he had pledged his word not to reveal the secret of Hastings' presence within sight and sound of this ovation, he realized that to lead him in would be a crowning and dramatic episode. A compromise was possible, however, and he slipped around the table and whispered in the ear of "Big Bill" Hall.

In the gallery the little mother had shrunk farther back into the shadows, half afraid of this uproar, yet happier than ever before in her life. She looked at her boy, sitting close beside her, his face hidden so that she could not see the illuminating joy in it, the dazed look of unreality, as if he were coming through dreamland. There was no surprise in her mind. Of course, this triumph was no more than what was due, and she could have hugged the massive chairman as a person of excellent discernment. The boy whispered:

"He does not really mean it, Mother. There is some mistake. He has been out of college so long that he does not know what things mean."

She patted his burning cheek and whispered:

"Why, I knew it all the time. But you would not believe it if your mother said you were a hero. I wonder how the Head Coach feels now? I wish I----"

With a quick leap Jack had wrenched himself away and was clattering down the stairs. He had seen the whispered conference and "Big Bill" Hall staring up at the gallery, and fearing that he was trapped and betrayed, he fled into the street and was running for the nearest corner before the Assistant Manager could pass through the hall to the foot of the stairs. The conspirator had not promised silence regarding Hastings' mother, and before she knew what was happening he was by her side, so quickly that she thought it was Jack returned to her. As she looked up in alarm, the Assistant Manager had her reluctant hand, and was insisting upon leading her to the railing of the little gallery. She gazed at the upturned faces, and there was a moment of expectant silence. Then Judge Hall shouted the command: "Three long cheers for Jack Hastings' mother."

She was trembling now, and the lights and faces below swam in a mist of tears, as she timidly bowed. Then, as the full realization of the tribute swept over her like an engulfing wave, she became youthfully erect, she smiled, and blew kisses with both her slender hands toward the long table. She was thanking them in behalf of her boy, that was all, because they too understood. Certain that he must be waiting not far away, she bowed again, and hurried down the stairs, meeting the Head Coach in the hall. His face was serious, his manner abashed, as he said:

"I want to ask whether you will shake hands with me, Mrs. Hastings. I am proud that you do me the honor. I wish to tell you something more than you have heard to-night, and I am going to tell it to all the men, when I return to the room. Your son was too heavy to handle himself as well as he did last year and the year before. But I believe he would have rowed in the race if a mistake had not been made. I found out when it was too late that his rigging, or measurements, in the shell was not right for him, and it would have made considerable difference if he could have been shifted in time. It was wholly my fault, and nobody else was to blame in any way. I can never make it up to him, and my only consolation is that you have found what I have learned, that he is a good deal finer man than we thought him, and an honor to Yale beyond all the rest of us. You must hate me, more than any one else in the world. I remember how my mother shared my joys and sorrows in the crew."

The mother put out her hand again, and clasped that of the Coach, as she said simply, but with a catch of emotion in her voice:

"I did hate you to-day. I thought you had broken my boy's heart. Now I have to thank you. God's ways are not our ways, and I rejoice that while I have lost a captain of the crew, I have gained a man, every inch of him, tried in the fire and proven. This is the happiest night of my life. I would rather have heard the speech of Judge Hall, and the cheers that followed it, than to have my son in four winning crews and captain of every one of them. Of course he is a hero. Didn't you know that?"

The Head Coach started to speak, when the elbow of "Big Bill" Hall nudged him. The bulk of him filled the passage-way, and his voice boomed out into the night:

"If you don't bring that boy around to the hotel to see me in the morning, I will take back all I have said about him, Mrs. Hastings. Now I know where he gets all his fine qualities."

She blushed and courtesied, and the two men escorted her to the pavement, as John Hastings slipped from a doorway across the street and came over to them. His mother's escort, believing that he had been no nearer the banquet than this, made a rush for him, which he nimbly dodged, and slipped his mother's arm in his.

"He is mine now," said she. "He has a previous engagement, and, besides, I don't want him spoiled. Good-night to you. Come along, Jack, you are not too big to mind your mother, are you?"

The two walked slowly across the Green toward the campus. The communion of their uplifted souls was perfect, their happiness almost beyond words. She was first to break this rare, sweet silence, and strangely enough, she said nothing about the vindication and the triumph. Looking up into his face she almost whispered:

"Are you caring so much that Cynthia disappointed you to-day, dear boy of mine? Does it hurt and rankle? I could see it in your eyes to-night. Do you want to marry her very much? Are you sure of your heart?"

He winced a little and held her arm tighter than before, as he replied:

"Little Mother, it has been my first real love story, as you know. The thought of her has helped me over many a rough place. Before to-day she was always so quick to understand. And--and she seemed to like me better than any other fellow she knew. I was fairly aching to be worthy of her, to make my place in the world for her. I wasn't conceited enough to think she loved me. I was only hoping that some day--Any man has a right to do that, has he not?"

It was not easy for the mother to say what she wished to tell him, but at length her response was:

"I don't want you to think I am criticising her, or sitting in judgment, but you must not let her mar your faith and hope and happiness. I want to help you to guard those precious gifts. You must not blame her too much. You have been believing that she understood you, because you would have it that way. She is no older than you, a girl of twenty, accustomed to a wholly different life from yours. She was flattered by your attention, for you were a great man in her eyes. She liked you because no one can help liking you. But it made a difference when you were a hero knocked off his pedestal. And yet you expected to find in her sympathy a balm that even your mother could not give. Poor lad, mothers are handy sometimes, but most boys do not find it out until their mothers are gone from them."

"I thought I knew her so well," said he, after another silence. "It looks as if I had amused her and nothing more. But I have found you, and I have fallen head over heels in love with you, Little Mother, all over again, and I am going to kiss you right under this electric light."

Even yet she was not sure that she had sounded the depths of the ache in his heart, but as she looked up at the light in his campus rooms she said softly:

"Some day you will understand, and will thank God your mother understood. He giveth you the victory unforeseen."

CORPORAL SWEENEY, DESERTER

"I'll be gettin' five years--five years at least."

The surging fear became fixed in these words, and they, in turn, swung in with the cadenced tramp of Corporal Sweeney, the other prisoner, the sentry, and the young lieutenant along the Chien-men Road toward the American camp and the guard-house. As the refrain rolled itself over in the brain of the corporal, he discovered that he was muttering it aloud when the other prisoner said explosively:

"I know you will, and so will I; but, by ----, I'm going to make a run for it!"

"You're the silliest fool in Peking if you do," replied the corporal. "An' where would you be after runnin' to? No place to----"

He checked himself and turned his head. The sentry and the lieutenant were at their heels, but in the clamor of the crowded thoroughfare the talk had been unheard. A swirl of Chinese street merchants was scattering from in front of a German wagon-train, a troop of Bengal Lancers clattered recklessly into the ruck, and the road flung the tangled traffic to and fro between its walls, like a tide in a mill-race. The corporal muttered again to the scowling man beside him:

"Nothin' doin'. Sure to be captured this side Tientsin. Forget it. You're crazier than thim----"

A shout in his ear made him jump aside, and he saw the sentry lurch against the flank of a transport camel and lose his footing as a cart-wheel struck him from behind. The loaded rifle fell on the chaotic stone flagging. The other prisoner heard the crash and knew what it meant. Here seemed the chance he sought, but instead of doubling into one of the crooked side streets, he broke away down the middle of the Chien-men Road, and the traffic opened up for him, as the crowd, grasping as by instinct what was happening, scattered in panic.

The young lieutenant whipped his revolver from its holster and took a snap-shot at thirty yards, not caring overmuch if a Chinese got in range of the heavy bullet. As he fired, the fugitive seemed to trip and catch himself, then ran a few steps farther, falling all the time, until he crumpled up in the filthy mud of the pavement. The lieutenant stood looking at his quarry, his eye still ranging along the barrel of the revolver, while the sentry had picked up his muddy rifle, and, feeling faint and shaky, watched a private of his own regiment become, in an instant, something that looked like a roll of blankets doubled under the feet of the Chinese street mob.

The two had forgotten the corporal, who stood beside them as intent as they upon the pitiable tragedy; and the three appeared to be posing for a military tableau. But almost as swiftly as death had come to the escaping prisoner, there swept over the one that remained a frenzy of desire to run. He knew how remote was the possibility of freedom, how desperately small the chance against recapture, dead or alive. But hammers were beating in his head the cadence of "I'll be gettin' five years--five years at least." And the opportunity was made by another's unwilling sacrifice.

The corporal was unconscious of a voluntary act, and something seemed swiftly to drag him, as he wheeled and dashed for the entrance of an alley not more than ten yards away. A peddler's shoulder-yoke was splintered against his shoulder, and he thought that the bruising impact was the shock of the expected bullet; the yells of the sweetmeat-sellers at the alley's mouth sounded like the outcry he dreaded to hear; but the lieutenant and the sentry turned in time to see only the trail of sprawling Chinese left in the wake of the escaping prisoner. The sentry jumped in pursuit, stumbled into the tortuous alley, and saw a blank wall ahead. Between that and the Chien-men Road three lanes twisted off to left and right, and he ran up the nearest one at random.

Somewhere beyond the huddled houses, he could hear the thud of leather-shod feet, the staccato flight of which marked the trail of the deserter; but the pursuer could find no way through or around. When he entered the street beyond, there was no blue overcoat in the crowded field of vision, and the shuffling sound of felt-soled native shoes gave no clew. He returned to the lieutenant, genuinely weary and speciously disappointed. The officer was leaning over the body of the other prisoner, and there was keen unhappiness in his flushed young face.

"I've found an empty cart," he said to the sentry. "Help me carry this poor fellow to camp. He has no use for a doctor. As for Sweeney, he can't get away. He's hiding in the American section, and I will get the provost-marshal over the field 'phone from headquarters, and have the guard sweep the district from end to end. The man will be captured before morning."

This occurred to the fugitive, also, as certain to happen, when he staggered through a little courtyard, far in the heart of the "Chinese City," and fell into a corner of a smoke-fogged room. It was so nearly nightfall that the one occupant, failing to recognize the headlong visitor, yelled and scuttled away from the brazier which he was trying to coax into warmth against the winter night.

"It's me--all same me--come back. You no sabee this American soldier if men come to look see me," gasped the corporal.

The Chinaman nodded without speaking and slipped out. Sweeney was fighting for breath, and the fumes of coal-gas in the fetid room were suffocating him. He tore a hole in the side wall of oiled paper, and gulped his lungs full of the frosty night air. It was the room from which he had gone the day before, when, after drinking much Japanese beer, he had bought a quart of _samshu_ to carry away with him.

It was the deadly, maddening samshu that had caused the downfall of Corporal Sweeney, and now he was trying to remember what had happened in the twenty-four hours before he had been marched down the Chien-men Road with the other prisoner. He knew that he had overstayed his leave, but that was a minor matter compared with the row in the canteen on Legation Street. He recalled that an American officer had entered the place to investigate the uproar, and the corporal's mind held a blurred picture of himself conspicuously cursing his superior officer with black oaths, and struggling to "knock the face off him." Then he had fled, to be picked up later by the lieutenant who had shot and killed Private Smathers on the way to camp.

The corporal drew back from the hole in the paper wall, and slumped down on the floor, a Chinese blue blouse tucked under his aching head.

"An' five years more, for attempted escape," he groaned, "an' two clane enlistments behind me, an' promotion a cinch in the next six months. Never a coort martial ag'in' me. It was all the ---- samshu. Serves a white man right for foolin' with haythen liquor. An' they'll be pullin' me out of here in no time at all. Holy Mother! where kin I go?"

The disgraced soldier turned as a new dread smote him.

"An' the Boxer swine that kapes this poison-shop will be handin' me over as soon as he hears the news of the shindy down the Chien-men Road."

Panic fear caught hold of the corporal, body and soul, and he wrestled with it in the darkness. He knew not whither to turn. Hiding among the Chinese in the city was impossible, and to take to the open road meant capture at Tientsin or Taku if he made his way that far in a flight toward the seacoast. To go blindly into the country about Peking, unarmed and penniless as he was, knowing perhaps five words of Chinese, was to drag out the finish in slow starvation, or to be picked up by a foreign outpost, or to fall among hostile natives. He was as helpless as a castaway adrift on a raft in mid-ocean. The penalties of capture or surrender seemed worse than any sort of death, for Corporal Sweeney had been a good soldier, bred to a hardy outdoor life.

The disgrace tortured him, and either alternative of his situation was unthinkable. Yet after three hours of trembling in his trap, he would have welcomed the chance of flight into the open, beyond the walls of the nightmare city. The Chinese landlord had not returned, and it seemed likely that intruders had been warned away from the smoky room with the hole in the oiled paper of the side wall. The deserter had found a bottle of samshu, and tried to brace his nerves with a swallow of it, but the smell sickened him, and he flung it against the brick partition, in a passion of rage at the source of his cyclonic ruin. The heavy, yellow liquid guttered across the floor, and the stench of it drove the soldier into the courtyard, where the chatter of Chinese voices sent him quaking back into his little inferno.

He was not a coward, but he was alone in the darkness with such fears as wrested from him all weapons. Somewhere outside, a Chinese watchman, drifting along on his rounds, was beating a gong to frighten away evil-doers. The measured _bong, bong, bong_ caused the fugitive to wish that sudden death might overtake the harmless old gentleman, for at each stroke it seemed as if tacks were being driven into his skull. Toward midnight Corporal Sweeney fell into a stupor of complete exhaustion that was no more than a caricature of sleep. A scratching on the paper door and a falsetto whisper awoke him, and he sprang to his feet, striking out in the gloom, to ram his fist through the fragile panel into something yielding which cried:

"O-w-w--a-i-i! Me, master; You Han. Somet'ing do-ing, all l-l-ight?"

The deserter extended a muscular arm, grasped a handful of wadded coat, and dragged the visitor in with one lightning sweep. Then, trying to choke his amazed voice into a whisper, he croaked:

"Oh, me cock-eyed darlin' lad! An' how did you dig me out? I niver felt like kissin' a Chink before. Now get me out o' this, or I'll break your back over me two knees. I'm down an' out this time. Are you goin' to give me up for the sake o' the rewarrd?"

The boy, whom the corporal had picked up, a starving outcast from a plundered village, on the march to Peking, tried to tell what he knew in painfully Pidgin English, shattered by his master's interruptions. He had learned that the corporal was a day overdue in camp, and had started out to find him early that morning. Then came the tragedy and the escape, the tidings of which were brought to the camp with the body of Private Smathers. You Han had heard the name "Sweeney" scattered through the excited talk of the company, until he pieced together a working impression of what had happened. He had ransacked canteens, tea-houses and gambling-dens from the camp to the Tatar city wall until he began to pick up the trail from groups at the street corners who had seen the "madman runaway soldier."

The corporal chopped the narrative short, because he was not interested in the way of his fall into the bottomless pit, but in an agony of speculation regarding the new possibility of a way out. The coming of You Han made him clutch the hope of the open country, anywhere, anyhow, no matter what lay beyond. The thought of flight alone among the millions of mysterious aliens had oppressed him horribly. You Han had the fidelity of a dog for the domineering American soldier, whose ways he did not understand, but, because they were his ways, they were believed to be impeccable. Now his lord had done something more extraordinary than usual, for which, it appeared, decapitation threatened. In addition to blind obedience, You Han knew what samshu was, and was ready to make large allowances. It was only this new tone of entreaty, almost of supplication, that alarmed the servant. Corporal Sweeney shook off the paralyzing grip of his fears long enough to give You Han orders in a voice that still quavered in little broken gasps:

"You get Peking cart, quick? Qui-qui--chop-chop--chase yourself--sabee? Have you got any money in thim flowin' robes?"

You Han flashed a bisecting grin that was like splitting a sheet of parchment, and dove into a knotted sash, where the clink of silver made reply. Then he was gone, and the deserter became instantly submerged in the returning rush of his manifold terrors. It seemed years before he heard the protesting shrieks of a cart axle and the rattle of harness in the compound. You Han stole in, and half dragging the corporal to the cart, helped him to crawl under the curtained hood, whispering:

"One piecee cart belong my cousin. No pay him. You stay bottom side. We go countlee."

As the cart jolted into the alley, the man beneath the cover heard, faint and far, the beat of cavalry hoofs on the frozen earth. They were coming nearer, and the fugitive flattened himself under a pile of quilts, while the sweat beaded on his face. In a few moments the clink of sabers and the creaking of saddle-leathers were audible, and the patrol wheeled into a side street so close to the jogging cart that the deserter caught the voice of a Sixth Cavalry trooper objecting:

"It's a blazin' cold night to be pokin' in all the rat-holes of Peking for as good a blank-blanked son of a gun as Jack Sweeney. Wonder how he got up against it so hard."

The reply was lost, for the deserter's heart was whanging against his ribs and sounding louder to him than the clatter of cavalry. You Han drove the mule at a gallop and said no word except once, when he turned and remarked:

"Samshu no good, master. Floget it. Dlink water, all l-l-ight."

At daylight the cart was beyond the outer wall of Peking, heading west, as aimless a derelict as ever tossed in uncharted seas. You Han did not veer toward his own home on the Pei-ho, for he knew that it lay in the track of the traffic to Tientsin, and that over the ruins of his village floated the flag of an American infantry outpost. The dawn came clear and cold, but sad in the gray aspect of tenantless villages, and the litter of ungarnered millet-fields stretching over the flat lands to the horizon. The driver told the deserter that the last foreign outpost had been passed, and that he might get out and walk with safety. Half frozen, bitterly bruised from tossing between floor and roof of the springless cart, hungry and weak, the deserter climbed from his ignominious hiding-place and trudged in silence along the rutted highway. Presently You Han turned off the road, threaded a course through the yards of a shattered temple, and drew up by a marble altar.

"Have chow now," said he, and the summons to breakfast aroused a shadow of animation in the deserter. He knew not where the meal was coming from, but he was past wondering, and the Chinese youth was in full command of the sorry expedition. You Han crawled into the cart and produced a charcoal stove, dried fish, potatoes, and a teapot.

"All belong my cousin. He keep store; pay bimeby," said the boy, with what might have passed for a wink.

The companions ate in silence. Shame had begun to march in the foreground of the deserter's thoughts, crowding fear a little to the rear. The soldier of a conquering race was as helpless as a child in the hands of one of the conquered whom he had not considered wholly human, whose swarms had fled like rats before the path of the columns in khaki. The fugitive cursed and hated himself, possessed by an unmanly humiliation impossible to imagine a few hours before. The little dun mule munched dry millet-stalks, and squealed when You Han fetched him water from the temple well.

"I ain't got as much sand left in me as that sawed-off apology fer a mule," groaned the corporal; "an' he's a good deal more of a man than meself."

You Han resumed the march without consulting his lord, which made the deserter writhe anew, but he could say nothing. The cart trailed along the foot of an ancient military wall for several miles, while the man sullenly chewed the cud of bitterness and the boy revolved great things in his unruffled mind. You Han was about to venture on some fragmentary consolation, when the deserter, who was walking a little in advance, balked in his tracks and stood crouched as if he had seen a rattlesnake. The dun mule snorted and fanned his ears like an agitated jack-rabbit. A furlong beyond, the steel ribbons of a railway track cut across the road and vanished in sandy cuttings. Corporal Sweeney looked instinctively for a telegraph line and saw one wire threading the skyline in a humming loop. The sight hurled him back to the Chien-men Road and the lieutenant alertly picking off Private Smathers with a long snap-shot.

"What's this fool railroad doin' here? I wonder are they consthructin' it to ketch up with me? Come a-runnin' there _pronto_,[A] chop-chop. Ain't there no gettin' away from annywhere?"

[A] Soldiers who have campaigned in the Philippines use the
word _pronto_ for "hurry up" or "hustle."

He volleyed the questions at You Han as if they had been jerked out of him. The boy looked puzzled as he replied:

"Devil cart go Pao-ting-fu, then go Peking. No belong to Amelican soldier. English have got."

They crossed the rails on the run, as if the metals burned their feet, and the deserter flogged the mule into a gallop, until their road twisted beyond sight of the track and its unexpected autograph of a civilization they were fleeing headlong. He would not have dared predict it, but in the afternoon Corporal Sweeney began to be a man again. They had passed beyond the area laid waste by the Christian allies, and the villages were populous and busy. You Han had glimpsed a shadow of the shame that smoldered in his master's mind, and he was for making little overtures, simple yet crafty, to win him back to himself. As the first step in reconstruction, he called "Look-see, master!" and pulled from beneath the body of the cart a "Krag" rifle, bayonet, and cartridge-belt. The deserter threw back his shoulders at sight of them, and in an outburst of gratitude smote his benefactor so that his head ached for several hours.

"Last night, when get cart, go back camp," twittered You Han; "find one piecee master's gun in tent. Plenty dark. Sently shoot, no can hit. Good, by golly!"

"Good! you twenty-four carat jewel of Asia! You're the goodest imitation of a white man that was ever bound in yeller leather by mistake. Now I feel as if I wanst looked like a man meself. Give me a rag an' a bit o' that stinkin' cookin'-grease, an' make room on the carrt till I do up me house-cleanin'."

You Han grinned and began to wail an interminable song about a girl called "Little Fat Spring Fragrance," who lived in the "Village of the Wise and Benevolent Magistrate." The ballad rose shriller as the singer saw the corporal swinging along ahead, his rifle nestling on his squared shoulder as if it had come home to its own, his back as flat as a board. You Han was even more jubilant when his master spun on his heel, and shouted with the rasp of the drill-ground in his voice:

"Shut up that racket! It's worse 'n the carrt axle."

The bracing wind swept keen out of the Siberian north, and sunshine flooded from a cloudless sky. The deserter forgot much of his weariness, and caught himself whistling "assembly," but broke off with a groan.

Toward sunset the surrounding wall of a village was outlined like a rocky island in the level plain. You Han halted a ragged wayfarer, and coaxingly addressing him as "great elder brother," dragged forth the information that the town was of considerable size, and that in it was the residence of the ruler of the district. The song of the "Village of the Wise and Benevolent Magistrate" had suggested an inspiration whose magnitude made You Han gasp. But he took possession of it without flinching, and when they were within a mile of the gateway in the wall he said to the deserter:

"You wait. I go look-see."

The mule browsed by the roadside, the corporal sprawled near by, and the brave figure in blue cotton trudged on alone to the town, the strangeness of which made his heart flutter. He swaggered in past the outer wall, searched out the _yamen_ of the district magistrate, and that dignitary graciously consented to see the importunate pilgrim. You Han kotowed before the heart-quaking presence in the gilded audience-room, and with wailing stammer delivered the oration composed on the cart:

"An illustrious and most honorable general of the foreign soldiers comes to visit your beautiful city. I am his insignificant and thrice-despised servant. This valiant and inexpressibly distinguished hero is of the Americans, who protect and do not plunder and destroy. He comes to extend peace and protecting power to your Heavenly Presence, and to learn whether you have been molested by other foreign-devil armies, whom he will swiftly punish if it be your august pleasure to ask it. My insufferably benevolent master leaves soldiers, cannon, horses behind him, lest he terrify the country round about, already in fear of the devastating foreign fighting-men. He sends the greetings of one ruler to another, and also his card."

You Han bobbed his head to the floor by way of incessant punctuation, and watching eagerly from the tail of his eye for results hopeful or otherwise, laid before the magistrate the vivid label of a tin of "Army Cut Plug," on which heroes in blue and khaki posed nonchalantly in a "baptism of fire." A group of official servants, crowding within ear-shot, saw a gleam of surprised pleasure twinkle through the huge spectacles of their ruler. They took their cue, and helping the trembling You Han to his feet, were soon bustling through the courtyard, propelled by vehement commands to make haste.

Half an hour later, the deserter saw approaching a procession led by You Han and a squad of yamen runners, whom he knew by the red tassels on their flat hats. These rode shaggy rats of ponies, and behind them tailed off scores of villagers on foot and convoys of squealing children. The American grabbed his rifle and dodged behind the cart, ready to run or open fire, until he heard You Han's shrill shouts of reassurance. Then he was swept up in an admiring throng, whose bodies doubled in homage, down to the wee tots who fell on their flat noses when they tried to kotow.

You Han had no time for explanations. He was expanding in the reflected glory of his own devising, and busy chasing children from under the agile hoofs of the ponies. In their layers of wadded coats, like so many puff balls, the jolly youngsters rolled to the roadside, and the deserter felt a stir of emotion which he could not have defined. Yes, there were homes and firesides and mothers and play and work and love in this land of desolation, and the smoke of the village hearths beckoned with vague homeliness.

The shopkeepers left their wares and the old men in the doorways tucked away their pipes when the procession filled the little streets, and the deserter rode to the yamen like a conquering hero. In the courtyard of the compound other servants waited to escort the "benevolent foreign general" to rooms made ready for him. There was fire in the brick _kang_, or sleeping-platform, and chickens, eggs, fruit and potatoes, and a fur-lined robe were heaped on a table. You Han vanished, and the outlaw sat himself down in speechless wonderment. Presently You Han returned and announced that the magistrate would be inexpressibly honored to receive the Personage in the evening, and the reason for not inviting him to dine was that he knew the guest would prefer his food prepared after his own strange fashion by his own servant. As in a gorgeous dream the deserter dined, with three attendants squabbling with You Han for the honor of passing each dish. Then he brushed his dusty leggings and blue clothes and summoned a barber.

A little later the guest was greeted as a person of rare distinction by the dignified elderly gentleman in red-silk robes who ruled and "squeezed" the district. The corporal rose grandly to the occasion. The two mingled to a nicety their mutual attitudes of respect, cordiality, protection. They talked laboriously through the doubtful medium of the overpowered You Han, whom the intricacies of the mandarin dialect bowled over from the one side, and on the other such instructions as these from the corporal:

"Tell old Four-Eyes that I'm the personal ripresintative of George Washington and Gineral Grant, an' that when I stamp me fut a million brave soldiers trimble violently; but that because I know a great intelleck when I see one, me heart is swelled with pride to sit down and talk it over as man to man. Poke that into him good and har-r-d."

The official volleyed many questions, and the deserter parried what fragments of them You Han was able to pass along. A military escort to the next village was offered, but the guest declined with polite emphasis. He was not seeking ostentation in public. When he went to his apartments after a surfeit of cakes, wine, and tobacco, Corporal John Sweeney rubbed his close-cropped head and puzzled over his identity. As he curled up on the warm brick kang, he was a deserter fast becoming reconciled to his fate.

"It strains the rivets of me imagination to believe it's rale. I hope there's more miracles in stock where this one was projuced," he murmured sleepily.

Just at dawn he awoke. There was a clatter of voices in the courtyard, and the sound of horses moving hurriedly. Presently the paper of the latticed wall was ripped, and a brown finger popped through. All the fears of the refugee came trooping back with squadrons reinforced. He ripped the door open, rifle in hand. A string of traders' ponies was filing out for an early start toward Peking, and a hostler stood with his face pressed against the hole in the wall, trying to catch a glimpse of the lordly foreigner. That was all. But the deserter saw again the smoky room in the "Chinese City," and heard the Sixth Cavalry squad wheel just in rear of his frantic flight. The "illustrious guest" was again the fugitive, escaping, he knew not whither, from "five years--five years at least."

He kicked the sleeping You Han into action, and the cart was under way as soon as the mule had fed.

"Only thirty miles from Peking," growled the corporal; "not half far enough. An' cavalry is prancin' out to loot, pacify, an' scatter Christian blessings with th' mailed fisht where they have no business to be thinkin' of. I hike till I drop, an' that's me ultimatum."

They pressed on all day until the dun mule swayed in the shafts and the pilgrims were ready to drop by the roadside. The night was passed in a village tavern, for You Han was too weary to organize a reception. The deserter slept fitfully, and awoke often talking to himself. Nervous and foot-sore, he took the trail at dawn of the third day, You Han watchful and worried. As the deserter turned frequently to look behind him, the aspect of the future crushed him, while the imminent past lashed him to persistent flight. Camp, and the close comradeship of men in blue and khaki; the routine round of his army years; the Chicago streets that had known his boyhood; the father and mother who were proud of his record--these and all other links in the chain of his thirty years were as if they had never been forged. Names, faces and scenes of which he had been an intimate part were in an obliterating distance, and nothing that had gone before was given strength to follow him, except the incidents of his escape, and these filled all the landscape with portents.

Soon they came to a schoolhouse in the middle of a tiny hamlet. You Han knew it for such when the refugees were rods away, since from the squat building came an incessant sound like the hum of a gigantic top. The children were reciting their daily task from the Confucian Analects at the limit of their lung power, when the foreigner was spied by a truant outpost, and the teacher could not hold the clamorous flock in leash. By scores they tumbled out to scamper off in terror until You Han shouted his message of good will and the corporal laughed, threw down his rifle, and became one of them. It was not long before uproarious applause greeted his attempts to play jackstones and strike the sharpened stick to make it fly into the miniature mud-pie "city."

Again the feeling of homeliness tugged at his heart, and he lingered among the children until the teacher gathered them in, with labor like that of collecting spilled quicksilver.

You Han swaggered into the next village beyond, with a port inspired by remembrance of the magistrate's yamen, but he came to grief at the hands of the village bully. There was no mistaking the character of this truculent ruffian. His garments were studiously awry, and his queue was loosely braided and coiled around his neck to show that he thirsted for combat. He resented the lofty bearing of the stranger, and the two clashed with disaster to the features of You Han, who was plucky but overmatched. He was rescued by the corporal, who gave the bully the worst beating of his career. The feat was applauded by a throng of villagers whose peace had been much disturbed by this chronic nuisance, and they feasted the hero at the house of the head man with complex and effusive hospitality. The wayfarers were pressed to stay and make the town their home for life.

This incident, coming in a sequence of revelations of the life of this hitherto despised people, set the thoughts of the deserter definitely into a new and hopeful channel.

"I begin to think," he said to You Han, "that I could stick it out in one of these back counties, at worst until the troops are l'avin' China in the spring. An' I could come pretty near to runnin' a town or two meself. One more day's march an' I'll risk stakin' out a claim for a while. An' I'll be a leadin' an' dignified citizen, an' grandfather by brevet to all the kids in the camp."

The advance was checked by the discovery that the cart axle had split and must be repaired to prevent a breakdown over the next bit of rough going. The corporal was in a bluster of impatience to press forward. Delay had not lost its power to frighten him. The next village lay ten miles beyond, but between was a desolate stretch of waste land in which no one lived, in which nothing grew. From the tiled roof of the tavern the corporal could see this little desert rolling like a lake almost from the village walls to the sky line. It caught his fancy with a huge onset of relief. Once beyond this barrier, he would feel secure against discovery, and he magnified it as the borderland of safety. You Han was surrounded by a group of voluble citizens who urged waiting two days until a new axle could be hewn from the solid tree; but the deserter exploded the conference by shouting: