those minutes go swiftly, think you? Was there any keeping one's thoughts to the work in hand? Come now, have you, my reader, ever lived through any remotely similar experience? Has it fallen to you to sit upon the stairs, hunched, sick, breathless, through endless minutes, whilst the surgeons were busy behind the door across the landing? Aye? you have? Then you, at least, can realize the anguish of that hour, the miserable physical distress of it, the searing pains across the forehead, the pressure upon the nape, the weight upon the heart that no sighing will heave off.

Susan took command, and kept them at it. The rooms vibrated to the screech of torn linen; she chattered, scolded, laughed, urged, sang, talked incessantly, cheerfully, working and making the rest work. How much longer could she keep this up? She marvelled at herself, her insensibility, her hardness of heart.

Was that a knock? The guns had done firing, but the musketry still flickered, died down, and broke out afresh. Surely some one was at the door? None dared to suggest such a thing. They looked askance at one another. It came again. Susan flew. Her brother was there, begrimed, beblooded, smiling, a kind word of the Governor's still glowing in his heart. "Old girl, we've beat them!" he said, not loudly, for he was near the end of his tether. "Oh, Dray, you are hurt" The passage behind his sister seemed to fill with women. "The Colonel isn't touched," he assured them, and saw Mrs. Hollinghurst toss up her hands and go down as if shot.

"I say I say!" he muttered, leaning heavily against the jamb.

"Oh, let her be! She will take no 'harm! Sue, see to your brother," whispered Mrs. Lamb, hurrying forward.

And so Susan was mercifully carried over the next half hour.

And what of young Chisholm? Having given his arm to the Colonel as far as the Prince's Lines, he had flown to rejoin his own corps at the Land Port and waited with mute impatience for the escalade which, as we know, was never pushed. When, later, a sally was permitted, his company was not among the three which were held in reserve, and his opportunity had come.

There are moments in our lives of spiritual and physical exaltation when the man is above himself, capable not merely of attempting, but of effecting the impossible. On such an occasion spirit and flesh are in as perfect accord as a fearless rider and a bold horse, before whose onset the impervious and the insurmountable sunders, yields, and flies behind. A man thus uplifted will never lack followers whose imaginations take fire from his, and are temporarily obsessed by his personality. Among the forty and odd commissioned officers of Lord M'Leod's regiment there was not a man who was not atiptoe for the onset. What faces! bloodless, curbed, gravely smiling as to the lips, and as to the eyes, jewelbright, jewel-hard. Every man of them all was perfectly certain that this was his own particular day, but one among them, unknown to his fellows, wore enchanted armor, a girl's riband and a girl's heart, and felt himself immune to steel and bullet. This hour should make him; he would rise to the height of the love with which his lady had crowned him.

Outside the drawbridge of the Land Port gate. upon the crown of the causeway which spans the flooded meadow. peering out into the fog, was old Ian Chisholm. With feet set well apart, and a bush of white beard hanging down over hands crossed upon the crook of his great teak walking-stick, he stood, scrutinizing impatiently the parties of M'Leod's men returning to

their bugles. For a time a continuous stream of Scottish lads poured past him on either side, chattering joyously in the Gaelic over sporrans heavy with the miscellaneous spoils of a stricken field. Some shepherded silent prisoners, some strode by with drawn faces enduring the smart of wounds.

When the stream of sound men slackened, came lame men helped or carried. Last came the dead, borne in a pathetic silence.

The watcher looked in the face of each as he passed, but looked in vain. Among the latest came a youngster hirpling slowly, for he had taken a bullet in the calf, and grieving aloud over a crippled sword-hand, and to him the old man addressed himself.

"Man, are ye no shamed to be greeting like a bairn? Whaur's yer ensign? Whaur's Mr. John Chisholm?"

"Iss it Ian oie.to Hector?-ta Master of Overskaig, that ye wull be speiring for? Oh, ta young chief wass clean gyte the day, whateffer! Indeed and indeed, and I did my endeevours, for that I am a Chisholm of Shinside too, but there wass no keeping with him. Ou! and all the pains of hell in ta wame o' ta man wha blaudit ma wrist!" He limped on, regarded sourly by his old clansman, and was presently under the skilled hands of good Mr. Cairncross.

San

And now the trickle had run dry. and still he held his post, although once and again canister from Fort Philip drove the water of the inundation seething before it. Spain had regained her lines and was covering failure with a renewed cannonade.

In the silence that followed a volley the watcher could distinguish the clink of boot-heels upon the causeway and still waited.

Then, brokenly and ill-rendered, came a whistled quick-step, the Chisholm "rant." The watcher beat time for a bar, upon the head of his staff: not the

massed bands of the garrison could have moved him So. "Hech! 'tis a wheen years syne these auld lugs heard yon. I jaloose 'twill be

a lad o' ma ain fowk."

he

"Ta laddie comes late comes last . . . he comes by his lane." He went to meet him. "John, iss it yersel'?"

It was John, though scarcely recognizable for the speckle of powder-rash that darkened his face (a pistol fired point-blank) and a cut across the cheek, through which the bone glimmered whitely. The lad stepped out dog. gedly, despite that awful fatigue which follows hand-to-hand fighting; and for all the secret glory of a first wound which had spared eye and limb, was in a silent rage with himself and the world at large, exasperated with the final incompleteness of a battle which but a minute before had seemed ideal in its perfection. "What's this? Ye're no' sair hurt?" "Naething, sir, naething; but ta dommed vratch hass brok' hiss parole. I brocht him safe till ta heid o' ta causeway. I hae hiss swoord, whateffer."

Alas, poor John! His prisoner, a person of distinction, to judge by the bullion tassel of his sword-knot, having surrendered in haste had repented at leisure, and, tempted by the obscurity of the weather, and disgusted with the ridiculous youth of his captor, had behaved ill. John might grumble; but what cared old Ian Chisholm? Linking his arm within that of his newly recovered kinsman, he haled him along to the Land Port, praising his God in the Gaelic that at this last, and in his old age, He had in mercy sent him a man of his blood to look him in the face.

"Never fash yersel' for yer hurt, John; I've a dizzen waur in me, and here I stand the day a soond man for ma years."

and Shinside maun bide their turn."

They had crossed the drawbridge, were under the arch and within the gate now; a dozen hands of welcome were extended; no jealousies had survived that furnace-heat of battle; but the lad broke from the circle of admiring comrades, his eye caught something in the background, "Wha's thot?-Ta leddy!"

Ashton Hilliers.

The traveller, as he approaches Japan, his mind filled with the lofty ideals of Bushido, his admiration stimulated by tales of magnificent courage displayed by her troops in the late war, becomes somewhat dismayed at the bitter feeling against our allies which is displayed on almost all sides by British residents in the Far East. Should he confine himself to official and diplomatic circles, he will be convinced that these tales are slanders with little or 110 foundation-the offspring of minds jealous at the keen and rapidly growing competition of Japanese trade. Let us break from out this narrow circle and probe a little deeper into these rival opinions on the inhabitants of this Empire of the East.

One thing at least we find that these factions have in common-a genuine admiration for the loyalty, the patriotism, the courage, and the thoroughness of the people of Japan; qualities we in this country would barter much at the present time to possess in an equal degree.

For the late Prince Ito, and for many of the leading residents in Japan, foreign residents of all classes and of all professions have a genuine respect and regard. Their old-world chivalry, their courtesy, their unselfish and

whole-hearted devotion to Emperor and country, compel indeed our admiration. Thus far the diplomat-in Japan alas! also hopelessly out of touch with trade and commerce. Why, oh! why can British diplomacy not realize that it exists for trade and because of trade, and that its raison d'être is, as is after all that of most of the public services, primarily to ensure the peaceful and uninterrupted flow of our commerce and of the fruits of our industry throughout the markets of the world? It has for some time been realized in this country that the Japanese are not the best people in the world with whom to have commercial dealings, and that they have not yet discovered that honesty is the best policy; but the general opinion still seems to be that this is merely a question of time-nay, even that better methods have already begun to prevail. It is not realized that because we are a Western race and the Japanese an Eastern one there must always be fundamental differences between us, and that it may take even centuries to eradicate what has existed for so many generations. It has been claimed that in Samurai days it was only the lowest class of Japanese who engaged in trade, but that, now that the upper classes are also entering all

professions, the high standard of the ancient warrior class will be diffused throughout the country. Unfortunately, the canker appears to be spreading upwards, for in the recent sugar scandals, which, although well nigh unnoticed in this country, created considerable consternation in Japan, members of both Houses of Parliament were seriously implicated.

But the antagonism of foreign residents does not, unfortunately, rest alone on unsound, and even dishonest, business transactions. The methods of minor officials, and particularly their dealings with subject (or, as they consider, inferior) races, are even less easy to condone. Incidentally it may surprise British readers to hear that since the war we, in common with other Western nations, are considered an inferior race by the rank and file in Japan, our sole claim to distinction being our wealth. Let us, however, turn to Japan's dealings in Formosa and Korea. The Press-perhaps, from the Japanese point of view, the best organized of all the fine organizations in Japan-has informed the world that Chinese methods of barbarism have long since vanished, and that all is peace and prosperity under the beneficent rule of the Rising Sun. It is a shock to discover that atrocities worthy of the Congo are still being perpetrated.

On the 7th, 8th, and 10th of May une Chinese-natives of Kachautsung and Sinchiautsun, near Takow, in the island of Formosa-were examined on a charge of gambling, of which they were undoubtedly guilty, and condemned to be flogged. Their relatives asked that they might first be examined by a doctor, but this the Japanese police peremptorily refused. The prisoners were flogged with a rattan, none of them receiving less than a hundred blows, and in order to make the pain more acute the rattan was brought down time after time on one spot, until the

flesh began to slough off their backs. On the 17th one man died of the effects, on the 19th another, and on the 23rd yet another-three out of the nine. The police officer responsible, Shiina, was tried before a Japanese court, and this was the judgment:

Although on the face of it these deaths seem to indicate that Shiina had exceeded the number of blows which he was to administer to the prisoners, still the punishment they received was exactly in accordance with their crime-therefore the accused officer must be acquitted of all responsibility.

It is only fair to add that an appeal was made to a higher court at the request of many Japanese residents, but the writer was unable to discover with what result.

The correspondent of the Japan Weekly Chronicle, from whom some of these facts are taken, reports:

Formerly I had been told repeatedly of such cases ending fatally, but I did not make inquiries for details. The cases were usually hushed up by a small payment of money to the relatives of the deceased prisoner, and the removal to another district of the policeman who had so flagrantly exceeded bis duty. Not infrequently such cases are never heard of, because the people are in terror of making any charge against a Japanese policeman, lest it be afterwards visited on their heads in other ways.

That this fear of reprisal is justified may be gathered from the following instance which occurred near Sung-Chin, in North Korea: One morning in July 1908, a Korean was brought into a missionary's dispensary to be dressed for bullet wounds in both legs. A gendarme out of a passing band had from sheer devilry taken a pot shot at him while he was weeding his field, utterly unaware of their proximity. A policeman, in the missionary's presence, asked that the offending gendarme should be identified, which another