About a year Inter, towards the end of 1898, there was great excitement in the sleepy town of Huang. chow, Hupeh, when a well-dressed and" efinedslooking young man, speaking "the Pekingese" dialect turned up out of the blue without servants or baggage. He went straight to the prefect's yamen and demanded board and lodging in al very peremptory manner. When questioned he refused either to give his name or rank, though he let it understood that he was a very important. person and had come all Ne] the way from Peking.
Now only a few weeks earlier a coup had taken place at the capital, when the Empress-Dowager _had seized the government and impri-toned her nephew, the Emperor Kuang HsG, on an island in one of the Imperial parks. In consequence, the whole Empire. was seething with rumours of all Kinds at this time. One such report which had even reached Huangchow was to the effeet that the Emperor had not really been arrested, but had managed make his escape in disguise.
No sooner did this mysterious young man appear on the scene, than all the wiseacres of Huangchow started nodding their heads unison and nudging each other: they knew who he was, though nobody dared to utter the dangerous words. 'The prefect, however, did not feel quite so sure and found the situation too much for him. He therefore temporized by letting the stranger take up his abode in the best room at his yamen, while at the some time he sent an' urgent message reporting the matter to Chang} Chih-tung, viceroy at Wuchang. But the viceroy himself was in no better position to take a decision; he had] not been to Peking for audience since Kuang Hsii had taken over the government and so did not know what he really looked like,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.