Finding the route open, Father Ruyffelaert and the students started out on the journey Thursday morning, stopping at Kang Fang-ingtse, where the fathers informed him th: the neighbourhood was quiet and the route to Eul-se Kiingsi open. They escorted the travellers for several li and then returned. When the party arrived at an isolated ie: farm situated near the old bed of a stream two bandits made a sortie out of a neighbouring village, and passing the caravan at a gallop then disappeared along the river bed. They returned with other companions and opened fire. The students and the cart had take refuge inside the farmhouse, Father Ruyffelaert, alone, waited for the bandits, and in order to aid in getting the students to safety, fired several shots. He was immediately shot down. At this sight one of the students, armed with a rifle came out of the farmhouse end endeavoured to give assistance to the priest. He was pierced two ballets and. the bandits el in on the two wounded men. The chief of the band was induced to eave Father Ruyffelaert alone, but the courageous student, Paul Licou, was killed where he stood. It ws then that the band started toward the farmhouse. The intervening. time had given the students opportunity to escape in all directions, the bandits paying no further attention to them, but concentrating on the cart: which they robbed completely and then after helping themselves to the mules, they decamped toward the west.
The fleeing students encountered Father Van Den Bossche coming to the aid of the party. The firing had been heard at Kang Fang-ingtse and the father placed himself at the head of a group of armed Christians and hastened to the rescue. When they arrived at the spot, Father Ruyffelaert was still conscious, but a dying condition. A stretcher was improvised and on the back, failing rapidly, the dying Was given extreme unction during a "halt. About 1235 p.m. the cottage arrived at the mission residence and shortly after this Father Ruyffeluert expired, A Useful Life The priest whose tragic end has just been recounted, arrived in in 1910 and' had devoted if almost entirely during the time of his connexion with his mis n to teaching. He founded and rected for several years the college of Toei-tse liang. Following that he Was called to the seminary of Eul-Che-se K'ingti where he taught his-and Chinese of which 'a profound scholar.
ther the priest is the last victim or merely the beginning of new list of victims in a vicinity which ig so rife with bandits that all the missionaries are confined to their fortified residences and must have watchers day and night on thei, walls, remains a question in the minds of those concerned. The authorities have promised to put the necessary machinery in action for capturing the murderers, but it ig felt that their good intentions are somewhat impaired, through the fact that most of the soldiers sued for the purpose are themselves Gisbanded brigands, who on the morrow might commit the same kind of outrage.
The prospect of the coming winter in this section of China is terrible The wheat is miserable and the irrigated section which should be under cultivation ig filled with folds, The" fainters have" been forced to cultivate opium, their grain torn out to make way for the poppy. On top of this they have been taxed for the cultivation of opium. Brigandage is unchecked and the whole outlook fcr the winter disheartening.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.