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 The
PRINCETON
FIELD GUIDE to
DINOSAURS
 The
PRINCETON
FIELD GUIDE to
DINOSAURS
3RD EDITION

GREGORY S. PAUL

Princeton University Press

Princeton and Oxford
Copyright © 2010, 2016, 2024 by Gregory S. Paul

Princeton University Press is committed to the protection of

copyright and the intellectual property our authors entrust to
us. Copyright promotes the progress and integrity of knowledge.
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Published by Princeton University Press

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All Rights Reserved

ISBN 978-0-691-23157-0
ISBN (e-book) 978-0-691-23156-3

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Editorial: Robert Kirk and Megan Mendonça

Production Editorial: Kathleen Cioffi
Text Design: D & N Publishing, Baydon, Wiltshire, UK
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Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
Preface6 Growth56
Acknowledgments6 Energetics57
Gigantism61
Introduction9 Mesozoic Oxygen 64
History of Discovery and Research 9 The Evolution—and Loss—of Avian
What Is a Dinosaur? 14 Flight64
Dating Dinosaurs 15 Dinosaur Safari 66
The Evolution of Dinosaurs and If Dinosaurs Had Survived 67
Their World 16 Dinosaur Conservation 68
Extinction26 Where Dinosaurs Are Found 69
After the Age of Dinosaurs 28 Using the Group and Species Descriptions 76
Biology28
General Anatomy and Locomotion 28
Group and Species Accounts 83
Skin, Feathers, and Color 38
Dinosaurs83
Respiration and Circulation 40
Digestive Tracts 42 Basal Dinosaurs 83
Senses45 Theropods86
Vocalization46 Sauropodomorphs202
Genetics46
Ornithischians261
Diseases and Pathologies 46
Behavior47
Additional Reading 374
Brains, Nerves, and Intelligence 47
Index to Dinosaur Taxa 375
Social Activities 48
Reproduction49 Index to Formations 382
PREFACE
If I were, at about age twenty as a budding paleozoologist Cerro del Pueblo, Hanson, Jinhua, Clearwater, Tiaojis-
and paleoartist, handed a copy of this book by a myste- han, Tsagayan, Tropic Shale, Mackunda, Blackleaf, Pari
rious time traveler, I would have been shocked as well Aike, Ukureyskaya, Villar del Arzobispo, Tegana, Kal-
as delighted. The pages would reveal a world of new di- lamedu, Wapiti, Bungil, Demopolis, Portezuelo, Prince
nosaurs and ideas that I barely had a hint of or had no Creek, Ulansuhai, Ulaanoosh, Sânpetru, Shinekhudag,
idea existed at all. My head would spin at the revelation Kitadani, Zhanghe, Woodbine, Calizas de la Huérguina,
of the therizinosaurs such as the wacky feathered Beipi- Chaochuan, Xert, Maevarano. The sheer number of new
aosaurus and at the biplane flying dromaeosaurids, not dinosaurs would demonstrate that an explosion in dino-
to mention the little halszkaraptors with their duck-like saur discoveries and research, far beyond anything that
beaks, or the oversized shoulder spines of Gigantspinosau- had previously occurred, and often based on new high
rus, the neck spines of Amargasaurus, the brow horns and technologies, marked the end of the twentieth century
atrophied arms of bulldog-faced Carnotaurus, the furry going into the twenty-first.
adornments of Tianyulong and Kulindadromeus, the bris- Confirmed would be the paradigm shift already under
tly tail of Psittacosaurus, the extraordinary preservation way in the late 1960s and especially the 1970s that ob-
of the armor of Borealopelta, the bat-like membranous served that dinosaurs were not so much reptiles as they
wings of scansoriopterygids, the long-necked stegosaur were near birds that often paralleled mammals in form and
Miragaia, and the often psychedelic frilled horns of the function. Dinosaurs were still widely seen as living in tropi-
new stable of centrosaurine and chasmosaurine ceratop- cal swamps, but we now know that some lived through
sids. Even Triceratops has proven to have strange skin. polar winters so dark and bitterly cold that low-energy rep-
How about colossal new sauropods that gave the giant tiles could not survive. Imagine a small dinosaur shaking
baleen whales a run for their money in terms of sheer the snow off its hairy body insulation while the flakes melt
bulk and could feed over six stories high in tree crowns? It on the scaly skin of a nearby titanic dinosaur whose body,
is a particular pleasure to restore the skeleton of the once oxygenated by a birdlike respiratory complex and pow-
mysterious Deinocheirus, long known from only its colos- ered by a high-pressure four-chambered heart, produces
sal arms—its peculiar skeleton does not disappoint. And the heat needed to prevent frostbite.
who would have imagined it would become possible to In just the eight years since the appearance of the sec-
figure out the colors of some feathered dinosaurs? I would ond edition of this book, the number of dinosaur species
note the new names for some old dinosaurs, including my named has expanded about 15 percent relative to some
favorite, Giraffatitan. And that old Brontosaurus is back! 200 years of research—if anything, there was more updat-
And now there are three royal species of Tyrannosaurus: ing between this edition and the second than between that
T. rex, T. regina, and T. imperator. There would be the di- and the first. Producing this third edition has been satisfy-
nosaur-bearing beds with the familiar yet often exotic ing in that it has given me yet more reason to more fully
names: Tendaguru, Morrison, Chinle, Wessex, Wealden, achieve a long-term goal, to illustrate the skeletons of al-
Lameta, Oldman, Kota, Kirtland, Arundel, Djadokhta, most all dinosaur species for which sufficiently complete
Nemegt, Cloverly, Navajo Sandstone, North Horn, Hell material is available. These have been used to construct
Creek, Portland, Lufeng, Arundel, New Egypt, Lance. the most extensive library of side-view life studies of di-
Plus there are the novel formations, at least to my eyes nosaurs in print to date. The result is a work that covers
and ears: Yixian-Jiufotang, Tiourarén, Dinosaur Park, what is now two centuries of scientific investigation into
Eumeralla, Longjiang, Two Medicine, Anacleto, Painten, the group of animals that ruled the continents for over 150
Shishugou, Huincul, Aguja, Ischigualasto, Qingshan, million years. Enjoy the travel back in time.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A complaint earlier this century on the online Dinosaur Brett-Surman, Philip Currie, John McIntosh, Robert Bak-
List by Ian Paulsen about the absence of a high-quality ker, Peter Galton, James Kirkland, Scott Persons, Rinchen
dinosaur field guide led to the production of the first and Barsbold, John Horner, Xu Xing, Frank Boothman, Dan-
then the second edition of this dinosaur guide. The excep- iel Chure, David Burnham, Kristina Curry Rogers, Alex
tional success of those editions combined with the continu- Downs, Steven and Sylvia Czerkas, Peter Dodson, David
ous flux of new discoveries and research led to production Evans, James Farlow, Jay Van Raalte, Hermann Jaeger,
of a third. Many thanks to those who have provided the Frances James, Tracy Ford, Catherine Forster, Rodolfo
assistance over the years that has made this book possible, Coria, John Foster, Mike Fredericks, Roland Gangloff,
including Kenneth Carpenter, Asier Larramendi, Michael Donald Glut, Mark Hallett, Jerry Harris, Thomas Holtz,

6
 Acknowledgments

Peter Larson, Nicholas Hotton, Guy Leahy, Nicholas Lon- John Jackson, Michael Triebold, David Varricchio, Mat-
grich, James Madsen, Jordan Mallon, Charles Martin, Hal- thew Wedel, David Weishampel, Jeffrey Wilson, Lawrence
szka Osmólska, Teresa Maryanska, Octavio Mateus, Carl Witmer, Ben Creisler, Dan Varner, Jens Lallensack, Saswati
Mehling, Ralph Molnar, Markus Moser, Darren Naish, Bandyopadhyay, Ji Shuan, Clint Boyd, Mickey Mortimer,
Mark Norell, Fernando Novas, Kevin Padian, Armand Tyler Greenfield, Mikko Haaramo, John Schneiderman,
Ricqles, Timothy Rowe, Dale Russell, Scott Sampson, John and many others. I would also like to thank all those who
Scannella, Mary Schweitzer, Masahiro Tanimoto, Michael worked on this book for Princeton University Press: Rob-
Taylor, Matthew Lamanna, Boris Sorkin, Robert Telleria, ert Kirk, Kathleen Cioffi, Laurel Anderton.

Iguanodon

7
The feathery dinosaur Avimimus
INTRODUCTION

HISTORY OF DISCOVERY AND RESEARCH

Dinosaur remains have been found by humans for millen- 1870s Belgian coal miners came across the complete skele-
nia and probably helped form the basis for belief in mythi- tons of iguanodonts that confirmed that they were long-
cal beasts including dragons. A few dinosaur bones were legged, three-toed semibipeds, not full quadrupeds.
illustrated in old European publications without their true At this time, the action was shifting to the United States.
nature being realized. In the West the claim in the Gen- Before the Civil War, incomplete remains had been found
esis creation story that the planet and all life were formed on the Eastern Seaboard. But matters really got moving
just two thousand years before the pyramids were built when it was realized that the forest-free tracts of the West
hindered the scientific study of fossils. At the beginning just being cleared of the First Peoples offered hunting
of the 1800s the numerous three-toed trackways found in grounds that were the best yet for the fossils of extinct ti-
New England were attributed to big birds, in part because tans. This quickly led to the “bone wars” of the 1870s and
they lacked tail drag marks. By the early 1800s the growing 1880s in which Edward Cope and Charles Marsh, hav-
geological evidence that Earth’s history was much more ing taken a dislike for one another that was as petty as it
complex and extended back into deep time began to free was intense, engaged in a bitter and productive competi-
researchers to consider the possibility that long-extinct tion for dinosaur fossils that would produce an array of
and exotic animals once walked the globe. complete skeletons. For the first time it became possible to
Modern dinosaur paleontology began in the 1820s in appreciate the form of classic Late Jurassic Morrison dino-
England. Teeth were found, and a few bones of the pred- saurs such as agile predatory Allosaurus and Ceratosaurus,
atory Megalosaurus and herbivorous Iguanodon were pub- along with Apatosaurus, Brontosaurus, Diplodocus, and Ca-
lished and named in 1824 and 1825. For a few decades it marasaurus—which were really elephantine quadrupeds—
was thought that the bones coming out of ancient sedi- the protoiguanodont Camptosaurus, and the bizarre plated
ments were the remains of oversized versions of modern Stegosaurus. Popular interest in the wonderful beasts was
reptiles. In 1842 Richard Owen recognized that many of further boosted.
the fossils were not standard reptiles, and he coined the By the turn of the century, discoveries shifted to younger
term “Dinosauria” to accommodate them. Owen had pre- deposits such as the Lance and Hell Creek, which pro-
evolutionary concepts of the development of life, and he duced classic dinosaurs from the end of the dinosaur era in-
envisioned dinosaurs as elephantine versions of reptiles, cluding duck-billed Edmontosaurus, armored Ankylosaurus,
so they were restored as heavy-limbed quadrupeds. This horned Triceratops, and the great Tyrannosaurus. As paleon-
led to the first full-size dinosaur sculptures for the grounds tologists moved north into Canada in the early decades of
of the Crystal Palace in the 1850s, which helped initiate the twentieth century, they uncovered a rich collection of
the first wave of dinomania as they excited the public. A slightly older Late Cretaceous dinosaurs including Alberto-
banquet was actually held within one of the uncompleted saurus, horned Centrosaurus, spiked Styracosaurus, and the
figures. These marvelous examples of early dinosaur art crested duckbills Corythosaurus and Lambeosaurus.
still exist. Inspired in part by the American discoveries, paleontol-
The first complete dinosaur skeletons, uncovered in Eu- ogists in other parts of the world looked for new dinosaurs.
rope shortly before the American Civil War, were those of Back in Europe abundant skeletons of German Plateosaurus
small examples, the armored Scelidosaurus and the birdlike opened a window into the evolution of early dinosaurs in
Compsognathus. The modest size of these fossils limited the the Late Triassic. In southeastern Africa the colonial Ger-
excitement they generated among the public. Found shortly mans uncovered at exotic Tendaguru the supersauropod
afterward in the same Late Jurassic Solnhofen sediments as Giraffatitan (was Brachiosaurus) and spiny Kentrosaurus. In
the latter was the “first bird,” Archaeopteryx, complete with the 1920s Henry Osborn at the American Museum in New
teeth and feathers. The remarkable mixture of avian and York dispatched Roy Andrews to Mongolia in a misguided
reptilian features preserved in this little dinobird did gener- search for early non-African humans that fortuitously led
ate widespread interest, all the more so because the publica- to the recovery of small Late Cretaceous dinosaurs, parrot-
tion of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution at about the beaked Protoceratops, the “egg-stealing” Oviraptor, and the ad-
same time allowed researchers to put these dinosaurs in a vanced, near-bird theropod Velociraptor. Dinosaur eggs and
more proper scientific context. The enthusiastic advocate entire nests were found, only to be errantly assigned to Pro-
of biological evolution Thomas Huxley argued that the toceratops rather than the oviraptorid that had actually laid
close similarities between Compsognathus and Archaeopteryx and incubated them. As it happened, the Mongolian expe-
indicated a close link between the two groups. In the late ditions were somewhat misdirected. Had paleontologists

9
History of Discovery and Research

also headed northeast of Beijing, they might have made even knowledge of the beginnings of predatory dinosaurs. Also
more fantastic discoveries that would have dramatically found shortly afterward in the Southwest was the closely
altered our view and understanding of dinosaurs, birds, related but much larger crested theropod Dilophosaurus of
and their evolution, but that event would have to wait an- the Early Jurassic.
other three-quarters of a century. What really spurred the science of dinosaur research
The mistake of the American Museum expeditions in were the Yale expeditions to Montana in the early 1960s
heading northeast contributed to a set of problems that that dug into the little-investigated Early Cretaceous Clo-
seriously damaged dinosaur paleontology as a science verly Formation. The discovery of the Velociraptor relative
between the twentieth-century world wars. Dinosaurol- Deinonychus finally made it clear that some dinosaurs were
ogy became rather ossified, with the extinct beasts widely sophisticated, energetic, agile dinobirds, a point reinforced
portrayed as sluggish, dim-witted evolutionary dead ends by the realization that they and the other sickle claws, the
doomed to extinction, an example of the “racial senes- troodontids, as well as the ostrichlike ornithomimids, had
cence” theory that was widely held among researchers who fairly large, complex brains. These developments led John
preferred a progressive concept of evolution at odds with Ostrom to note and detail the similarities between his Dei-
more random Darwinian natural selection. It did not help nonychus and Archaeopteryx and to conclude that birds are
matters when artist-paleontologist Gerhard Heilmann the descendants of energetic small theropod dinosaurs. Os-
published a seminal work that concluded that birds were trom further observed that the bird- and mammal-like body
not close relatives of dinosaurs, in part because he thought design of dinosaurs meant that that their newly apparent
dinosaurs lacked a wishbone furcula, which had just been presence in Arctic regions could not be taken as evidence
found, but misidentified, in Oviraptor. The advent of the that those ancient polar habitats were warm even in winter.
Depression, followed by the trauma of World War II— Realizing that the consensus dating back to the origi-
which led to the loss of some important fossils on the con- nal discovery that dinosaurs were an expression of the
tinent as a result of Allied and Axis bombing—brought reptilian pattern was flawed, Robert Bakker in the 1960s
major dinosaur research to a near halt. and 1970s issued a series of papers contending that dino-
Even so, public interest in dinosaurs remained high. saurs and their feathered descendants constituted a dis-
The paleoart of Charles Knight made him famous. The tinct group of archosaurs whose biology and energetics
Star Wars–Jurassic Park of its time, RKO’s King Kong of 1933 were more avian than reptilian. In the eye-popping arti-
amazed audiences with its dinosaurs seemingly brought to cle “Dinosaur Renaissance” in a 1975 Scientific American,
life. Two major film comedies, 1938’s Bringing Up Baby, Bakker proposed that some small dinosaurs themselves
starring Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn, and 1949’s were feathered. In the late 1970s, Montana native John
On the Town, featuring Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra, in- Horner found baby hadrosaurs and their nests, providing
volved climactic scenes in which sauropod skeletons at a the first look at how some dinosaurs reproduced. At the
semifictional New York museum collapsed because of the same time, researchers from outside paleontology stepped
hijinks of the lead characters. Unfortunately, the very pop- into the field and built up the evidence that the impact of
ularity of dinosaurs gave them a circus air that convinced a mountain-sized asteroid was the long-sought great dino-
many scientists that they were beneath their scientific dig- saur killer. This extremely controversial and contentious
nity and attention. idea turned into the modern paradigm when a state-sized
Despite the problems, discoveries continued. In an meteorite crater was found in southeastern Mexico dating
achievement remarkable for a nation ravaged by the Great to the end of the dinosaur era. At the same time, the vol-
Patriotic War and suffering under the oppression of Stalin- canic Deccan Traps of India were proposed as an adjunct
ism, the Soviets mounted postwar expeditions to Mongolia in the demise of the nonbird dinosaurs.
that uncovered the Asian version of Tyrannosaurus, a.k.a. These radical and controversial concepts greatly boosted
Tarbosaurus, and the enigmatic arms of enormous clawed popular attention on dinosaurs, culminating in the Jurassic
Therizinosaurus. Equally outstanding was how the Poles, Park novels and films that sent dinomania to unprecedented
led by the renowned Halszka Osmólska, took the place heights. The elevated public awareness was combined with
of the Soviets in the 1960s, discovering in the process the digital technology in the form of touring exhibits of ro-
famed complete skeleton of Velociraptor engaged in combat botic dinosaurs. This time the interest of paleontologists
with Protoceratops. They too found another set of mysteri- was raised as well, inspiring the second and ongoing golden
ous long arms with oversized claws, Deinocheirus. Another age of dinosaur discovery and research, which is surpass-
leader of Mongolian paleozoology has been the native Rin- ing that which has gone before. Assisting the work are im-
chen Barsbold. proved scientific techniques in the area of evolution and
In the United States, Roland Bird studied the track- phylogenetics, including cladistic genealogical analysis,
ways of herds of Texas-sized Cretaceous sauropods before which has improved the investigation of dinosaur relation-
World War II. Shortly after the global conflict, the Triassic ships. New generations of artists have portrayed dinosaurs
Ghost Ranch quarry in the Southwest, packed with com- with a “new look” that lifts tails in the air and gets feet off
plete skeletons of little Coelophysis, provided the first solid the ground to represent the more dynamic gaits that are in

10
 History of Discovery and Research

Deinonychus and
Tenontosaurus

line with the more active lifestyles the researchers now rising economies of many second-world nations, reducing
favor. This artist and researcher noticed that the sickle- the need to import Western expertise.
clawed dromaeosaurs and troodonts, as well as the ovirap- In South America, Argentine and American paleontolo-
torosaurs, possessed anatomical features otherwise found gists collaborated in the 1960s and 1970s to reveal the first
in flightless birds and suggested that these dinosaurs were Middle and Late Triassic protodinosaurs, finally showing
also secondarily flightless. that the very beginnings of dinosaurs started among sur-
Dinosaurs are being found and named at an unprec- prisingly small archosaurs. Since then, Argentina has been
edented rate as dinosaur science goes global, with efforts the source of endless remains from the Triassic to the end
under way on all continents. In the 1970s the annual So- of the Cretaceous that include the early dinosaurs Eoraptor
ciety of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting might have seen and Herrerasaurus, supertitanosaur sauropods such as Argen-
a half-dozen presentations on dinosaurs; now it is in the tinosaurus, Futalognkosaurus, and Dreadnoughtus, and oversized
area of a couple of hundred. Especially important has been theropods such as Giganotosaurus that preyed on them.
the development of local expertise made possible by the Among the most extraordinary finds have been sauropod

11
History of Discovery and Research

nesting grounds that allow us to see how the greatest land preserved material as well as of strife, as the locals con-
animals of Earth’s history reproduced themselves. tend with the authorities for the privilege of excavating
In southern Africa excellent remains of an Early Juras- the fossils for profit—sometimes altering the remains to
sic species of Coelophysis verified how uniform the dinosaur “improve” them—rather than for rigorous science. The
fauna was when all continents were gathered into Pangaea. feathered dinosaurs soon included the potential ovirap-
Northern Africa has been the major center of activity as a torosaur Caudipteryx. Even more astonishing have been
host of sauropods and theropods have filled in major gaps the Yixian-Jiufotang dromaeosaurs. These small sickle
in dinosaur history. Australia is geologically the most sta- claws bear fully developed wings not only on their arms
ble of continents, with relatively little in the way of tectoni- but on their similarly long legs as well. This indicates not
cally driven erosion to either bury fossils or later expose only that dromaeosaurs first evolved as fliers but that they
them, so dinosaur finds have been comparatively scarce were adapted to fly in a manner quite different from the
despite the aridity of the continent. The most important avian norm. The therizinosaur Beipiaosaurus looks like a
discoveries have been of Cretaceous dinosaurs that lived refugee from a Warner Brothers cartoon. But the Yixian-
close to the South Pole, showing the climatic extremes di- Jiufotang is not just about confirming that birds are dino-
nosaurs were able to adapt to. Glacier-covered Antarctica saurs and that some dinosaurs were feathered. One of the
is even less suitable prospecting territory, but even it has most common dinosaurs of the Early Cretaceous was the
produced the Early Jurassic crested avepod Cryolophosaurus parrot-beaked Psittacosaurus. Although it was known from
as well as other dinosaur bones. numerous skeletons across Asia found over the last eighty
At the opposite end of the planet, the uncovering of a years, no one had a clue that its tail sported large, arcing,
rich Late Cretaceous fauna on the Alaskan North Slope bristly spines until a complete individual with preserved
confirms the ability of dinosaurs to dwell in latitudes cold skin was found in the Yixian-Jiufotang. To top things off,
and dark enough in the winter that lizards and crocodilians the Yixian-Jiufotang has produced the small ornithischian
are not found in the same deposits. Farther south, a cadre Tianyulong, which suggests that insulating fibers were wide-
of researchers have continued to plumb the great dinosaur spread among small dinosaurs. There are new museums in
deposits of western North America as they build the most China brimming with enormous numbers of undescribed
detailed sample of dinosaur evolution from the Triassic dinosaur skeletons on display and in storage. Making the
until their final loss. We now know that armored ankylo- Yixian-Jiufotang deposits all the more interesting is that
saurs were roaming along with plated stegosaurs in the they appear to be the rare remnants of highland lakes
Morrison Formation, a collection of sauropods has been thousands of meters above sea level, where chilling win-
exposed from the Early Cretaceous, and one new ceratop- ters were similar to those at the poles. Lately coming from
sian and hadrosaur and theropod and ankylosaur after an- central Asia are the cartoonish dromaeosaurs Halszkarap-
other is coming to light in the classic Late Cretaceous beds. tor and Natovenator, which may have swum for their prey
Now Mongolia and especially China have become a great and grabbed at it with their duck-like heads.
frontier in dinosaur paleontology. Even during the chaos On a global scale, the number of dinosaur trackways
of the Cultural Revolution, Chinese paleontologists made that have been discovered is in the many millions. This
major discoveries, including the first spectacularly long- is logical in that a given dinosaur could potentially con-
necked mamenchisaur sauropods. As China modernized tribute only one skeleton to the fossil record but could
and Mongolia gained independence, Canadian and Amer- make innumerable footprints. In a number of locations,
ican researchers worked with their increasingly skilled and trackways are so abundant that they form what have been
independent resident scientists, who have become a lead- called “dinosaur freeways.” Many of the trackways were
ing force in dinosaur research. It was finally realized that formed in a manner that suggests their makers were mov-
the oviraptors found associated with nests at the Flaming ing in herds, flocks, packs, and pods. A few may record the
Cliffs were not eating the eggs but brooding them in a prea- attacks of predatory theropods on herbivorous dinosaurs.
vian manner. Almost all of China is productive when it The history of dinosaur research is not just one of new
comes to dinosaurs, and after many decades paleontolo- ideas and new locations; it is also one of new techniques
gists started paying attention to the extraordinary fossils and technologies. The turn of the twenty-first century has
being dug up by local farmers from Early Cretaceous Yix- seen paleontology go high tech with the use of computers
ian-Jiufotang lake beds in the northeast of the nation. for processing data and high-resolution CT scanners to peer
In the mid-1990s, complete fossils of small compsog- inside fossils without damaging them. Skeletal and life res-
nathid theropods labeled Sinosauropteryx began to show torations are being generated in 3-D digital format—
up with their bodies covered with dense coats of bristly whether this has improved the process is another matter.
protofeathers, to the delight of Ostrom and others. More Dinosaurology has also gone microscopic and molecular in
recently it has been argued that it is often possible to deter- order to assess the lives of dinosaurs at a more intimate
mine the color of the feathers! This was just the start: the level, telling us how fast they grew, how long they lived, and
Yixian-Jiufotang beds are so extensive and productive that at what age they started to reproduce. Bone isotopes are
they have become an inexhaustible source of beautifully being used to help determine dinosaur diets and to state that

12
 History of Discovery and Research

some dinosaurs were semiaquatic. And it turns out that unlikely that a reorganization of similar scale will occur in
feather pigments can be preserved well enough to restore the future, but we now know enough about the inhabitants
original colors. Meanwhile the Jurassic World franchise helps of the Mesozoic to have the basics well established. Sauro-
sustain popular interest in the group even as it presents an pods will not return to a hippo-like lifestyle, and dinosaurs’
obsolete, prefeather image of the birds’ closest relations. tails will not be chronically plowing through Mesozoic
The evolution of human understanding of dinosaurs has muds. Dinosaurs are no longer so mysterious. Even so, the
undergone a series of dramatic transformations since they research is nowhere near its end. To date, over 800 valid
were scientifically discovered almost two hundred years dinosaur species in about 500 genera have been discovered
ago. This is true because dinosaurs are a group of “exotic” and named. This probably represents at most a quarter,
animals whose biology was not obvious from the start, un- and perhaps a much smaller fraction, of the species that
like fossil mammals or lizards. It has taken time to build up have been preserved in sediments that can be accessed.
the knowledge base needed to resolve their true form and And, as astonishingly strange as many of the dinosaurs
nature. The latest revolution is still young. When I was a uncovered so far have been, there are equally odd species
youth, I learned that dinosaurs were, in general, sluggish, waiting to be unearthed. Reams of work based on as-yet-
cold-blooded, tail-dragging, slow-growing, dim-witted rep- undeveloped technologies and techniques will be required
tiles that did not care for their young. The idea that some to provide further details about both dinosaur biology and
were feathered and that birds are living descendants was the world in which they lived. And although a radical new
beyond imagining. Dinosaurology has matured in that it is view is improbable, there will be many surprises.

The fuzzy dinosaur

Heterodontosaurus

13
What Is a Dinosaur?

WHAT IS A DINOSAUR?
To understand what a dinosaur is, we must first start higher femur is a cylinder turned in at a right angle to the shaft of
in the scheme of animal classification. The Tetrapoda are the femur that fits into a cylindrical, internally open hip
the vertebrates adapted for life on land—amphibians, rep- socket. This allows the legs to operate in the nearly verti-
tiles, mammals, birds, and the like. Amniota comprises cal plane characteristic of the group, with the feet directly
those tetrapod groups that reproduce by laying hard-shelled beneath the body. You can see this system the next time
eggs, with the proviso that some have switched to live birth. you have chicken thighs. The ankle is a simple fore-and-
Among amniotes are two great groups. One is the Synap- aft hinge joint that also favors a vertical leg posture. Dino-
sida, which includes the archaic pelycosaurs, the more ad- saurs were “hind-limb dominant” in that they were either
vanced therapsids, and mammals, which are the only bipedal or, even when they were quadrupedal, most of the
surviving synapsids. The other is the Sauropsida, much the animal’s weight was borne on the legs, which were always
same as the Reptilia, all but some early forms of which be- built more strongly than the arms. The hands and feet
long to the great Diapsida, which included most of the an- were generally digitigrade, with the wrist and ankle held
cient marine reptiles that are detailed in the Princeton field clear of the ground. All dinosaurs shared a trait also wide-
guide on that set of creatures. Surviving diapsids include spread among archosaurs in general, the presence of large
turtles, the lizard-like tuataras, true lizards and snakes, and often remarkably complex sinuses and nasal passages.
crocodilians, and birds. The Archosauria is the largest and Aside from the above basic features, dinosaurs, even
most successful group of diapsids and includes crocodilians when we exclude birds, were an extremely diverse group
and dinosaurs. Birds are literally flying dinosaurs. of animals, rivaling mammals in this regard. Dinosaurs
Archosaurs also include the basal forms informally ranged in form from nearly birdlike types such as the
known as thecodonts because of their socketed teeth, them- sickle-clawed dromaeosaurs to rhino-like horned ceratop-
selves a diverse group of terrestrial and aquatic forms that sians to armor-plated stegosaurs to elephant- and giraffe-
include the ancestors of crocodilians and the winged ptero- like sauropods and dome-headed pachycephalosaurs.
saurs (covered in another Princeton field guide), although They even took to the skies in the form of birds. However,
those fliers were not intimate relatives of dinosaurs and dinosaurs were limited in that they were persistently terres-
birds. trial. Although some dinosaurs may have spent some time
The great majority of researchers now agree that the feeding in the water like moose or fishing cats, at most a
dinosaurs were monophyletic in that they shared a com- few became strongly amphibious in the manner of hippos,
mon ancestor that made them distinct from all other ar- much less marine like seals and whales. The only strongly
chosaurs, much as all mammals share a single common aquatic dinosaurs are some birds. The occasional state-
ancestor that renders them distinct from all other synap- ment that there were marine dinosaurs is therefore very
sids. This consensus is fairly recent—before the 1970s it incorrect—these creatures of Mesozoic seas were various
was widely thought that dinosaurs came in two distinct forms of reptiles that had evolved over the eons.
types that had evolved separately from thecodont stock, The situation within dinosaurs is interesting because it
the Saurischia and Ornithischia. It was also thought that has become chaotic. For over a century, dinosaurs have
birds had evolved as yet another group independently from generally been segregated into the two classic groups: the
thecodonts. Dinosauria is formally defined as the phyloge- Saurischia, which includes the largely herbivorous sau-
netic clade that includes the common ancestor of Tricer- ropodomorphs and the usually predaceous theropods, birds
atops and birds and all their descendants. Because different included; and the vegetarian Ornithischia, which despite the
attempts to determine the exact relationships of the ear- name has nothing to do with birds. But while ornithischi-
liest dinosaurs produce somewhat different results, there ans are clearly a real, monophyletic clade, the saurischian
is some disagreement about whether the most archaic, group has always been weak. Part of the problem is that
four-toed theropods were dinosaurs or lay just outside the the earliest species of a given group are all pretty similar to
group. This book includes them, as do most researchers. one another, and it is difficult to parse out the few, still sub-
In anatomical terms, one of the features that most distin- tly different characters that show they are at the base of one
guish dinosaurs centers on the hip socket. The head of the of the greater, more sophisticated groups but not the other.

A basal archosaur,
Euparkeria

14
Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
the young foreign devil, that for a time they all seemed to lose
heart. The Lookers were subjected to ridicule by the crowd because
by their incantations they were supposed to render themselves
invisible to foreign eyes, and it was difficult to explain the high
percentage of casualties among them on the grounds of accidental
contact with flying bullets. Finally a ruse was decided on. The white
man was to come out for a parley. A student, recently attached to
the yamen of the local magistrate as an interpreter volunteered—in
good faith, Wen believed—to act in that capacity on this occasion.
The meeting took place by one of the breaches in the wall. The
engineer demanded that the three principal leaders of the Lookers
Le surrendered to him on the spot, and held until the arrival of
troops from T'ainan. While they were pretending to listen, a party
crept around behind the wall. He heard them, stepped back in time
to avoid being clubbed to death, in a moment shot two of them
dead, and shot also the captain of the Lookers, who had been
conducting the parley. Then, evidently, he had backed tow ard the
main house and had nearly reached it when his cartridges gave out.
Doane was busy, what with the improvised burial and with noting
down Wen's narrative, until nearly noon. By this time he was very
sleepy. There was nothing more he could do. The ruins of the main
house would not be cool before morning. Nor would the soldiers
arrive. He decided to call at once on the magistrate and arrange for
a guard to be left in charge of the compound; then to set up his cot
in a cell in one of the local caravansaries. He had brought a little
food, and the magistrate would give him what else he needed. The
innkeeper would brew him tea.... Before two o'clock he was asleep.

3
He was awakened by a persistent light tapping at the door. Lying
there in the dusky room, fully clad, gazing out under heavy lids at
the dingy wall with its dingier banners hung about lettered with the
Chinese characters for happiness and prosperity, and at the tattered
gray paper squares through which came soft evening sounds of
mules and asses munching their fodder at the long open manger, of
children talking, of a carter singing to himself in quavering falsetto, it
seemed to him that the knocking had been going on for a very long
time. His thoughts, slowly coming awake, were of tragic stuff. Death
stalked again the hills of Hansi. Friends had been butchered. The
blood of his race had been spilled again. Life was a grim thing....
A voice called, in pidgin-English.
He replied gruffly; sat up; struck a match and lighted the rush-
light on the table. It was just after eight.
He went to the door; opened it. A small, soft, yellow Chinaman
stood there.
“What do you want?” Doane asked in Chinese.
The yellow man looked blank.
“My no savvy,” he said.
“What side you belong?” The familiar pidgin-English phrases
sounded grotesquely in Doane's ears, even as they fell from his own
lips.
“My belong Shanghai side,” explained the man. He was apparently
a servant. Some one would have brought him out here. Though to
what end it would be hard to guess, for a servant who can not make
himself understood has small value. And no Shanghai man can do
that in Hansi.
“What pidgin belong you this side?”
“My missy wanchee chin-chin.”
Thus the man. His mistress wished a word. It was odd. Who,
what, would his mistress be!
Doane always made it a rule, in these caravansaries, to engage
the “number one” room if it was to be had. A countryside inn, in
China, is usually a walled rectangle of something less or more than a
halfacre in extent. Across the front stands the innkeeper's house,
and the immense, roofed, swinging gates, built of strong timbers
and planks. Along one side wall extend the stables, where the
animals stand a row, looking over the manger into the courtyard.
Along the other side are cell-like rooms, usually on the same level as
the ground, with floors of dirt or worn old tile, with a table, a narrow
chair or two of bent wood, and the inevitable brick kang, or platform
bed with a tiny charcoal stove built into it and a thickness or two of
matting thrown over the dirt and insect life of the crumbling surface.
At the end of the court opposite' the gate stands, nearly always, a
small separate building, the floor raised two or three steps from the
ground. This is, in the pidgin vernacular, the “number one” room.
Usually, however, it is large enough for division into two or three
rooms. In the present instance there were two rather large rooms on
either side of an entrance hall. Doane had been ushered into one of
these rooms with no thought for the possible occupant of the other,
beyond sleepily noting that the door was closed.
Hastily brushing his hair and smoothing the wrinkles out of his
coat he stepped across the hall. That other door was ajar now. He
tapped; and a woman's voice, a voice not unpleasing in quality,
cried, in English, “Come in!”

S
he rose, as he pushed open the door, from the chair. She was
young—certainly in the twenties—and unexpectedly, curiously
beautiful. Her voice was Western American. Her abundant hair
wras a vivid yellow. She was clad in a rather elaborate negligee robe
that looked odd in the dingy room. Her cot stood by the paper
windows, on a square of new white matting. Two suit-cases stood on
bricks nearer the kang. And a garment was tacked up across the
broken paper squares.
“I'm sorry to trouble you,” she said breathlessly. “But it's getting
unbearable. I've waited here ever since yesterday for some word. I
know there was trouble. I heard so much shooting. And they made
such a racket yelling. They got into the compound here. I had to
cover my windows, you see. It was awful. All night I thought they'd
murder me. And this morning I slept a little in the chair. And then
you came in... I saw you... and I was wild to ask you the news. I
thought perhaps you'd help me. I've sat here for hours, trying to
keep from disturbing you. I knew you were sleeping.”
She ran on in an ungoverned, oddly intimate way.
“I'm glad to be of what service I—” He found himself saying
something or other; wondering with a strangely cold mind what he
could possibly do and why on earth she was here. His own long
pent-up emotional nature was answering hers with profoundly
disturbing force.
“I ought to ask you to sit down,” she was saying. She caught his
arm and almost forced him into the chair. She even stroked his
shoulder, nervously yet casually. He coldly told himself that he must
keep steady, impersonal; it was the unexpectedness of this queer
situation, the shock of it...
“It's all right,” said she. “I'll sit on the cot. It's a pig-sty here. But
sometimes you can't help these things.... please tell me what
dreadful thing has happened!”
She had large brown eyes... odd, with that hair!... and they met
his, hung on them.
In a low measured voice he explained:
“The natives attacked a mission station here—”
“Oh, just a mission!”
“They burned it down, and killed all but one of the workers there.”
“Were they white?”
“The workers were Chinese, Christian Chinese. But—”
“Oh, I see! I couldn't imagine what it was all about. It's been
frightful. Sitting here, without a word. But if it was just among the
Chinese, then where's—I've got to tell you part of it—where's Harley
Beggins? He brought me out here. He isn't the kind that skips out
without a word. I've known him two years. He's a good fellow. You
see, this thing—whatever it is—leaves me in a hole. I can't just sit
here.”
“I am trying to tell you. Please listen as calmly as you can. First
tell me something about this Harley Beggins.”
“He's with the Ho Shan Company. An engineer. But say—you don't
mean—you're not going to—”
“He was a young man?”
“Yes. Tall. Curly hair. A fine-looking young man. And very refined.
His family... but, my God, you—”
“You must keep quiet!”
“Keep quiet! I'd like to know how, when you keep me in suspense
like this!” She was on her feet now.
“I am going to tell you. But you must control yourself. Mr. Beggins
must be the young engineer who tried to help the people in the
compound.”
“He was killed?”
“Quiet! Yes, he was killed. I buried him this morning.”
Then the young woman's nerves gave way utterly, Doane found
his mind divided between the cold thought of leaving her, perhaps
asking the magistrate to give her an escort down to Ting Yang or up
through the wall to Peking, and the other terribly strong impulse to
stay. It was clear that she was not—well, a good woman; excitingly
clear. She said odd things. “Well, see where this mess leaves me!”
for one. And, “What's to become of me? Do I just stay out here? Die
here? Is this all?”... When, daring a lull in the scene she was making
he undertook to go, she clung to him and sobbed on his shoulder.
The young engineer had meant little in her life. Her present emotion
was almost wholly fright.
 He knew, then, that he couldn't go. He was being swept toward
destruction. It seemed like that. He could think coolly about it during
the swift moments. He could watch his own case. One by one, in
quick-flashing thoughts, he brought up all the arguments for
morality, for duty, for common decency, and one by one they failed
him. Something in life was too strong for him. Something in his
nature.... This, then was the natural end of all his brooding,
speculating, struggling with the demon of unbelief.... And even then
he felt the hideously tragic quality of this hour.

S
he was, it came out, a notorious woman of Soo-chow Road,
Shanghai; one of the so-called “American girls” that have
brought a good name to local disgrace. The new American
judge, at that time engaged in driving out the disreputable women
and the gamblers from the quasi protection of the consular courts,
had issued a warrant for her arrest, whereupon young Beggins, who
had been numbered among her “friends,” had undertaken to protect
her, out here in the interior, until the little wave of reform should
have passed.
Despite her vulgarity, and despite the chill of spiritual death in his
heart, he wished to be kind to her. Something of the long-frustrated
emotional quality of the man overflowed toward her. He did what he
could; laid her case before the magistrate, and left enough money to
buy her a ticket to Peking from the northern railroad near Kalgan.
This in the morning.
One other thing he did in the morning was to write to Hidderleigh,
at Shanghai, telling enough of the truth about his fall, and asking
that his successor be sent out at the earliest moment possible. And
he sent off the letter, early, at the Chinese post-office. At least he
needn't play the hypocrite. The worst imaginable disaster had come
upon him. His real life, it seemed, was over As for telling the truth at
the mission, his mind would shape a course. The easiest thing would
be to tell Boatwright, straight. Though in any case it would come
around to them from Shanghai. He had sealed his fate when he
posted the letter. They would surely know, all of them. Henry
Withery would know. It would reach the congregations back there in
the States. At the consulates and up and down the coast—where
men drank and gambled and carved fortunes out of great inert China
and loved as they liked—they would be laughing at him within a
fortnight.
And then he thought of Betty.
That night, on the march back to T'ainan, he stood, a solitary
figure on the Pass of the Flighting Geese, looking up, arms
outstretched, toward the mountain that for thousands of years has
been to the sons of Han a sacred eminence; and the old prayer,
handed down from another Oriental race as uttered by a greater
sinner than he, burst from his lips:
“I will lift mine eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help!”
But no help came to Griggsby Duane that night. With tears lying
warm on his cheeks he strode down the long slope toward Tainan.
 CHAPTER VII—LOVE IS A TROUBLE
1

I
T WAS early morning—the first day of April—when the Pacific
liner that carried Betty Doane and Jonathan Brachey out of
Yokohama dropped anchor in the river below Shanghai and
there discharged passengers and freight for all central and northern
China.
Brachey, on that occasion, watched from his cabin porthole while
Betty and the Hasmers descended the accommodation ladder and
boarded the company's launch. Then, not before, he drank coffee
and nibbled a roll. His long face was gray and deeply lined. He had
not slept.
He went up to Shanghai on the next launch, walked directly across
the Bund to the row of steamship offices, and engaged passage on a
north-bound coasting steamer. That evening he dined alone, out on
the Yellow Sea, steaming toward Tsingtau, Chefu and (within the five
days) Tientsin. He hadn't meant to take in the northern ports at this
time; his planned itinerary covered the Yangtse Valley, where the
disorderly young shoots of revolution were ripening slowly into red
flower. But he was a shaken man. As he saw the problem of his
romance, there were two persons to be saved, Betty and himself. He
had behaved, on the one occasion, outrageously. He could see his
action now as nothing other than weakness, curiously despicable, in
the light of the pitiless facts. Reason had left him. Gusts of emotion
lashed him. He now regarded the experience as a storm that must
be somehow weathered. He couldn't weather it in Shanghai. Not
with Betty there. He would surely seek her; find her. With his
disordered soul he would cry out to her. In this alarming mood no
subterfuge would appear too mean—sending clandestine notes by
yellow hands, arranging furtive meetings.
He was, of course, running away from her, from his task, from
himself. It was expensive business. But he had meant to work up as
far as Tientsin and Peking before the year ran out. He was, after all,
but taking that part of it first. To this bit of justification he clung. He
passed but one night at Tientsin, in the curiously British hotel, on an
out-and-out British street, where one saw little more to suggest the
East than the Chinese policeman at the corner, an occasional passing
amah or mafoo, and the blue-robed, soft-footed hotel servants; then
on to Peking by train, an easy four-hour run, lounging in a European
dining-car where the allied troops had fought their way foot by foot
only seven years earlier.
Brachey, though regarded by critical reviewers as a rising authority
on the Far East, had never seen Peking. India he knew; the Straits
Settlements—at Singapore and Penang he was a person of modest
but real standing; Borneo, Java, Celebes and the rest of the vast
archipelago, where flying fish skim a burnished sea and green
islands float above a shimmering horizon against white clouds; the
Philippines, Siam, Cochin China and Hongkong; but the swarming
Middle Kingdom and its Tartar capital were fresh fuel to his coldly
eager mind. He stopped, of course, at the almost Parisian hotel of
the International Sleeping Car Company, just off Legation Street.
Peking, in the spring of 1907, presented a far from unpleasant
aspect to the eye of the traveler. The siege of the legations was
already history and half-forgotten; the quarter itself had been wholly
rebuilt. The clearing away of the crowded Chinese houses about the
legations left à glacis of level ground that gave dignity to the walled
enclosure. Legation Street, paved, bordered by stone walks and gray
compound-walls, dotted with lounging figures of Chinese
gatekeepers and alert sentries of this or that or another nation—
British, American, Italian, Austrian, Japanese, French, Belgian,
Dutch, German—offered a pleasant stroll of a late afternoon when
the sun was low. Through gateways there were glimpses to be
caught of open-air tea parties, of soldiers drilling, or even of children
playing. Tourists wandered afoot or rolled by in rickshaws drawn by
tattered blue and brown coolies.
From the western end of the street beyond the American glacis,
one might see the traffic through the Chien Gate, with now and then
a nose-led train of camels humped above the throng; and beyond,
the vast brick walls and the shining yellow palace roofs of the
Imperial City. Around to the north, across the Japanese glacis, one
could stroll, in the early evening, to the motion-picture show, where
one-reel films from Paris were run off before an audience of many
colors and more nations and costumes, while a placid Chinaman
manipulated a mechanical piano.

B
rachey had letters to various persons of importance along the
street. With the etiquette of remote colonial capitals, he had
long since trained himself to a mechanical conformity.
Accordingly he devoted his first afternoon to a round of calls, by
rickshaw; leaving cards in the box provided for the purpose at the
gate house of each compound. Before another day had gone he
found return cards in his box at the hotel; and thus was he
established as persona grata on Legation Street. Invitations
followed. The American minister had him for tiffin. There were
pleasant meals at the legation barracks. Tourist groups at the hotel
made the inevitable advances, which he met with austere dignity.
Meantime he busied himself discussing with experts the vast
problems confronting the Chinese in adjusting their racial life to the
modern world, and within a few days was jotting down notes and
preparing tentative outlines for his book.
This activity brought him, at first, some relief from the emotional
storm through which he had been passing. Work, he told himself,
was the thing; work, and a deliberate avoidance of further
entanglements.
 If, in taking this course, he was dealing severely with the girl
whose brightly pretty face and gently charming ways had for a time
disarmed him, he was dealing quite as severely with himself; for
beneath his crust of self-sufficiency existed shy but turbulent springs
of feeling. That was the trouble; that had always been the trouble;
he dared not let himself feel, lie had let go once before, just once,
only to skim the very border of tragedy. The color of that one bitter
experience of his earlier manhood ran through every subsequent act
of his life. Month by month, through the years, he had winced as he
drew a check to the hard, handsome, strange woman who had been,
it appeared, his wife; who was, incredibly, his wife yet. With a set
face he had read and courteously answered letters from this
stranger. A woman of worldly wants, all of which came, in the end,
to money. The business of his life had settled down to a systematic
meeting of those wants. That, and industriously employing his talent
for travel and solitude.
No, the thing was to think, not feel. To logic and will he pinned his
faith. Impulses rose every day, here in Peking, to write Betty. It
wouldn't be hard to trace her father's address. For that matter he
knew the city. He found it impossible to forget a word of hers. Vivid
memories of her round pretty face, of the quick humorous
expression about her brown eyes, the movements of her trim little
head and slim body, recurred with, if anything, a growing vigor They
would leap into his mind at unexpected, awkward moments, cutting
the thread of sober conversations. At such moments he felt strongly
that impulse to explain himself further. But his clear mind told him
that there would be no good in it. None. She might respond; that
would involve them the more deeply. He had gone too far. He had
(this in the bitter hours) transgressed. The thing was to let her
forget; it would, he sincerely tried to hope, be easier for her to
forget than for himself He had to try to hope that.

3
B
ut on an evening the American military attaché dined with
him. They sat comfortably over the coffee and cigars at one
side of the large hotel dining-room. Brachey liked the attaché.
His military training, his strong practical instinct for fact, his
absorption in his work, made him the sort with whom Brachey, who
had no small talk, really no social grace, could let himself go. And
the attaché knew China. He had traversed the interior from
Manchuria and Mongolia to the borders of Thibet and the Loto
country of Yunnan, and could talk, to sober ears, interestingly. On
this occasion, after dwelling long on the activity of secret
revolutionary societies in the southern provinces and in the Yangtse
Valley, he suddenly threw out the following remark:
“But of course, Brachey, there's an excellent chance, right now, to
study a revolution in the making out here in Hansi. You can get into
the heart of it in less than a week's travel. And if you don't mind a
certain element of danger...”
The very name of the province thrilled Brachey. He sat, fingering
his cigar, his face a mask of casual attention, fighting to control the
uprush of feeling. The attache was talking on. Brachey caught bits
here and there; “You've seen this crowd of banker persons from
Europe around the hotel? Came out over the Trans Siberian with
their families. A committee representing the Directorate of the Ho
Shan Company. The story is that they've been asked to keep out of
Hansi for the present for fear of violence.... You'd get the whole
thing, out there—officials with a stake 'n the local mines shrewdly
stirring up trouble while pretending to put it down; rich young
students agitating, the Chinese equivalent of our soap-box Socialists;
and queer Oriental motives and twists that you and I can't expect to
understand.... The significant thing though, the big fact for you, I
should say—is that if the Hansi agitators succeed in turning this little
rumpus over the mining company into something of a revolution
against the Imperial Government, it'll bring them into an
understanding with the southern provinces. It may yet prove the
deciding factor in the big row. Something as if Ohio should go
democratic this year, back home. You see?... There are queer
complications. Our Chinese secretary says that a personal quarrel
between two mandarins is a prominent item in the mix-up.... That's
the place for you, all right—Hansi! They've got the narrow-gauge
railway nearly through to T'ainan-fu, I believe. You can pick up a
guide here at the hotel. He'll engage a cook. You won't drink the
water, of course; better carry a few cases of Tan San. And don't eat
the green vegetables. Take some beef and mutton and potatoes and
rice. You can buy chickens and eggs. Get a money belt and carry all
the Mexican dollars you can stagger under. Provincial money's no
good a hundred miles away. Take some English gold for a reserve.
That's good everywhere. And you'll want your overcoat.”
Five minutes later Brachey heard this:
“A. P. Browning, the Agent General of the Ho Shan Company, is
stopping here now, along with the committee. Talk with him, first.
Get the company's view of it. He'll talk freely. Then go out there and
have a look—see for yourself. Say the word, and I'll give you a card
to Browning.”
Now Brachey looked up. It seemed to him, so momentous was the
hour, that his pulse had stopped. He sat very still, looking at his
guest, obviously about to speak.
The attaché, to whom this man's deliberate cold manner was
becoming a friendly enough matter of course, waited.
“Thanks,” Brachey finally said. “Be glad to have it.”
But the particular card, scribbled by the attaché, there across the
table, was never presented. For late that night, in a bitter revulsion
of feeling, Brachey tore it up.

I
n the morning, however, when he stopped at the desk, the
Belgian clerk handed him a thick letter from his attorney in New
York, forwarded from his bank in Shanghai. He read and reread
it, while his breakfast turned cold; studied it with an unresponsive
brain.
It seemed that his wife's attorney had approached his with a fresh
proposal. Her plan had been to divorce him on grounds of desertion
and non-support; this after his refusal to supply what is
euphemistically termed “statutory evidence.” But the fact that she
had from month to month through the years accepted money from
him, and not infrequently had demanded extra sums by letter and
telegram, made it necessary that he enter into collusion with her to
the extent of keeping silent and permitting her suit to go through
unopposed. His own instructions to his lawyer stood flatly to the
contrary.
But a new element had entered the situation. She wished to marry
again. The man of her new choice had means enough to care for her
comfortably. And in her eagerness to be free she proposed to
release him from payment of alimony beyond an adjustment to
cover the bare cost of her suit, on condition that he withdraw his
opposition.
It was the old maneuvering and bargaining. At first thought it
disgusted and hurt him. The woman's life had never come into
contact with his, since the first few days of their married life, without
hurting him. He had been harsh, bitter, unforgiving. He had believed
himself throughout in the right. She had shown (in his view) no
willingness to take marriage seriously, give him and herself a fair
trial, make a job of it. She had exhibited no trait that he could
accept as character. It had seemed to him just that she should suffer
as well as he.
But now, as the meaning of the letter penetrated his mind, his
spirits began to rise. It was a tendency he resisted; but he was
helpless. From moment to moment his heart, swelled. Not once
before in four years had the thought of freedom occurred to him as
a desirable possibility. But now he knew that he would accept it,
even at the cost of collusion and subterfuge. He saw nothing of the
humor in the situation; that he, who had judged the woman so
harshly, should find his code of ethics, his very philosophy, dashed to
the ground by a look from a pair of brown eyes, meant little. It was
simply that up to the present time an ethical attitude had been the
important thing, whereas now the important thing was Betty. That
was all there seemed to be to it. But then there had been almost as
little of humor as of love in the queerly solitary life of Jonathan
Brachey.
He cabled his attorney, directly after breakfast, to agree to the
divorce. Before noon he had engaged a guide and arranged with him
to take the morning train southward to the junction whence that
narrow-gauge Hansi Line was pushing westward toward the ancient
provincial capital.
In all this there was no plan. Brachey, confused, aware that the
instinctive pressures of life were too much for him, that he was
beaten, was soberly, breathlessly, driving toward the girl who had
touched and tortured his encrusted heart. He was not even honest
with himself; he couldn't be. He dwelt on the importance of studying
the Hansi problem at close range He decided, among other things,
that he wouldn't permit himself to see Betty, that he would merely
stay secretly near her, certainly until a cablegram from New York
should announce his positive freedom. In accordance with this
decision he tore up his letters to her as fast as they were written. If
the fact that he was now writing such letters indicated an alarming
condition in his emotional nature, at least his will was still intact. He
proved that by tearing them up. He even found this thought
encouraging.
But, of course, he had taken his real beating when he gave up his
plans and caught the coasting steamer at Shanghai. He was to learn
now that rushing away from Betty and rushing toward her were
irradiations of the same emotion.
He left Peking on that early morning way-train of passenger and
freight cars, without calling again at the legation; merely sent a chit
to the Commandant of Marines to say that he was off. He had not
heard of the requirement that a white traveler into the interior carry
a consular passport countersigned by Chinese authorities, and also,
for purposes of identification, a supply of cards with the Chinese
equivalent of his name; so he set forth without either, and (as a
matter of fixed principle) without firearms.
 CHAPTER VIII—THE WAYFARER
1

P
ASSENGER traffic on the Hansi Line ended at this time at a
village called Shau T'ing, in the heart of the red mountains.
Brachey spent the night in a native caravansary, his folding cot
set up on the earthen floor. The room was dirty, dilapidated, alive
with insects and thick with ancient odors. A charcoal fire in the
crumbling brick kang gave forth fumes of gas that suggested the
possibility of asphyxiation before morning. Brachey sent his guide, a
fifty-year-old Tientsin Chinese of corpulent figure, known, for
convenience, as “John,” for water and extinguished the fire. The
upper half of the inner wall was a wooden lattice covered with
paper; and by breaking all the paper squares within his reach,
Brachey contrived to secure a circulation of air. Next he sent John for
a piece of new yellow matting, and by spreading this under the cot
created a mild sensation of cleanliness, which, though it belied the
facts, made the situation a thought more bearable. For Brachey,
though a veteran traveler, was an extremely fastidious man. He bore
dirt and squalor, had borne them at intervals for years, without ever
losing his squeamish discomfort at the mere thought of them. But
the stern will that was during these, years the man's outstanding
trait, and his intense absorption in his work, had kept him driving
ahead through all petty difficulties. The only outward sign of the
strain it put him to was an increased irritability.
He traveled from Shau T'ing to Ping Yang, the next day in an
unroofed freight ear without a seat, crowded in with thirty-odd
Chinese and their luggage. During the entire day he spoke hardly a
word. His two servants guarded him from contact with the other
natives; but he ignored even his own men. At a way station, where
the engine waited half an hour for water and coal, a lonely division
engineer from Lombardy called out a greeting in bad French.
Brachey coldly snubbed the man.
He planned to pick up either a riding animal or a mule litter at
Ping Yang. As it turned out, the best John could secure was a freight
cart; springless, of course. T'ainan was less than a hundred miles
away, yet he was doomed to three days of travel in a creaking, hard-
riding cart through the sunken roads, where dust as fine as flour
sifts through the clothing and rubs into the pores of the skin, and to
two more nights at native inns—with little hope of better
accommodation at T'ainan.
By this time Brachey was in a state of nerves that alarmed even
himself. Neither will nor imagination was proving equal to this new
sort of strain. The confusion of motives that had driven him out here
provided no sound justification for the journey. When he tried to
think work now, he found himself thinking Betty. And misgivings
were creeping into his mind. It amounted to demoralization.
He walked out after the solitary dinner of soup and curried chicken
and English strawberry jam. The little village was settling into
evening calm. Men and boys, old women and very little girls, sat in
the shop fronts—here merely rickety porticoes with open doorways
giving on dingy courtyards—or played about the street. Carpenters
were still working on the roof of the new railway station. Three
young men, in an open field, were playing decorously with a
shuttlecock of snake's skin and duck feathers, deftly kicking it from
player to player. Farther along the street a middle-aged man of great
dignity, clad in a silken robe and black skull-cap with the inevitable
red knot, was flying a colored kite ... through all this, Jonathan
Brachey, the expert observer, wandered about unseeing.

2
arther up the hill, however, rounding a turn in the road, he stopped
short, suddenly alive to the vivid outer world. A newly built wall of
F
brick stood before him, enclosing an area of two acres or
more, within which appeared the upper stories of European
houses, as well as the familiar curving roofs of Chinese tile.
And just outside the walls two young men and two young women, in
outing clothes, white folk all, were playing tennis. To their courteous
greeting he responded frigidly.
Later a somewhat baffled young Australian led him to the office of
M. Pourmont and presented him.
The distinguished French engineer, looking up from his desk,
beheld a tall man in homespun knickerbockers, a man with a strong
if slightly forbidding face. He fingered the card.
“Ah, Monsieur Brashayee! Indeed, yes! It is ze grand plaisir! But it
mus' not be true zat you go on all ze vay to T'ainan-fu.”
“Yes,” Brachey replied with icy courtesy, “I am going to T'ainan.”
“But ze time, he is not vat you call—-ripe. One makes ze trouble.
It is only a month zat zay t'row ze pierre at me, zay tear ze cart of
me, zay destroy ze ear of me! Choses affreuses! I mus'not let you
go!''
Brachey heard this without taking it in any degree to himself. He
was looking at the left ear of this stout, bearded Parisian, from
which, he observed, the lobe was gone.... Then, with a quickening
pulse, he thought of Betty out there in T'ainan, in real danger.
“Come wiz me!” cried M. Pourmont. “I vill show you vat ve do—
nous ici.” And snatching up a bunch of keys he led Brachey out
about the compound. He opened one door upon what appeared to
be a heap of old clothes.
“Des sac â terres,” he explained.
Brachey picked one up. “Ah,” he remarked, coldly interested
—“sand-bags!”
“Yes, it is zat. Sand-bag for ze vail. Ve have ze femme Chinoise—
ze Chinese vimmen—sew zem all every day. And you vill look...” He
led the way with this to a corner of the grounds where the firm loess
had been turned up with a pick. “It is so, Monsieur Brashayee,
partout. All is ready. In von night ve fill ze bag, ve are a fort, ve are
ready.... See! An' see!”
He pointed out a low scaffolding built here and there along the
compound wall for possible use as a firing step. Just outside the wall
crowding native houses were being torn down. “I buy zem,”
explained M. Pourmont with a chuckle, “an' I clear avay. I make a
glacis, nest ce pas?” On several of the flat roofs of supply sheds
along the wall were heaps of the bags, ready filled, covered from
outside eyes with old boards. In one building, under lock and key,
were two machine guns and box on box of ammunition. Back in M.
Pourmont's private study was a stand of modern rifles.
“You vill see by all zis vat is ze t'ought of myself,” concluded the
genial Frenchman. “Ze trouble he is real. It is not safe to-day in
Hansi. Ze Société of ze Great Eye—ze Lookair—he grow, he fait
l'exercice, he make ze t'reat. You vill not go to T'ainan, alone. It is
not right!”
Brachey was growing impatient now.
“Oh, yes,” he said, more shortly than he knew. “I will go on.”
“You have ze arm—ze revolvair?”
Brachey shook his head.
“You vill, zen, allow me to give you zis.”
But Brachey declined the weapon stiffly, said good night, and
returned to the inn below.
The next morning a Chinese servant brought a note from M
Pourmont. If he would go—thus that gentleman—and if he would
not so much as carry arms for protection, at least he must be sure
to get into touch with M. Griggsby Duane at once on arriving at
T'ianan. M. Doane was a man of strength and address. He would be
the only support that M. Brachey could look for in that turbulent
corner of the world.
 3

T
he lamp threw a flickering unearthly light, faintly yellow, on
the tattered wall-hangings that bore the Chinese characters
signifying happiness and hospitality and other genial virtues.
The lamp was of early Biblical pattern, nor unlike a gravy boat of
iron, full of oil or grease, in which the wick floated. It stood on the
roughly-made table.
The inn compound was still, save for the stirring and the steady
crunching of the horses and mules at their long manger across the
courtyard.
Brachey, half undressed, sat on his cot, staring at the shadowy
brick wall. His face was haggard. There were hollows under the
eyes. His hands lay, listless, on his knees. The fire that had been for
a fortnight consuming him was now, for the moment, burnt out.
But at least, he now felt, the particular storm was over. That there
might be recurrences, he recognized. That girl had found her way,
through all the crust, to his heart. The result had been nearly
unbearable while it lasted. It had upset his reason; made a fool of
him. Here he was—now—less than a day's journey from her. He
couldn't go back; the thought stirred savagely what he thought of as
the shreds of his self-respect. And yet to go on was, or seemed,
unthinkable. The best solution seemed to be merely to make use of
T'ainan as a stopping place for the night and pass on to some other
inland city. But this thought carried with it the unnerving fear that he
would fail to pass on, that he might even communicate with her.
His life, apparently, was a lie. He had believed since his boyhood
that human companionship lay apart from the line of his
development. Even his one or two boy friends he had driven off. The
fact embittered his earlier life; but it was so. In each instance he had
said harsh things that the other could not or would not overlook. His
marriage had contributed further proof. Along with his pitilessly
detached judgment of the woman went the sharp consciousness that
he, too, had failed at it. He couldn't adapt his life to the lives of
others. Since that experience—these four years—by living alone,
keeping away, keeping clear out of his own land, even out of touch
with the white race, and making something of a success of it, he had
not only proved himself finally, he had even, in a measure, justified
himself. Yet now, a chance meeting with a nineteen-year-old girl
had, at a breath, destroyed the laborious structure of his life. It all
came down to the fact that emotion had at last caught him as surely
as it had caught the millions of other men—men he had despised.
He couldn't live now without feeling again that magic touch of
warmth in his breast. He couldn't go on alone.
He bowed his head over it. Round and round went his thoughts,
cutting deeper and deeper into the tempered metal of his mind.
He said to her: “I am selfish.”
He had supposed he was telling the simple truth. But clearly he
wasn't. At this moment, as at every moment since that last night on
the boat deck, he was as dependent on her as a helpless child. And
now he wasn't even selfish. These two days since the little talk with
M. Pourmont he had been stirred deeply by the thought that she
was in danger.
Over and over, with his almost repelling detachment of mind, he
reviewed the situation. She might not share his present emotion.
Perhaps she had recovered quickly from the romantic drift that had
caught them on the ship. She was a sensitive, expressive little thing;
quite possibly the new environment had caught her up and changed
her, filled her life with fresh interest or turned it in a new direction.
With this thought was interwoven the old bitter belief that no
woman could love him. It must have been that she was stirred
merely by that romantic drift and had endowed him, the available
man, with the charms that dwelt only in her own fancy. Young girls
were impressionable; they did that.
But suppose—it was excitingly implausible—she hadn't swung
away from him. What would her missionary folk say to him and his
predicament? Sooner or later he would be free; but would that clear
him with these dogmatic persons, with her father? Probably not. And
if not, wouldn't the fact thrust unhappiness upon her? You could
trust these professionally religious people, he believed, to make her
as unhappy as they could—nag at her.
Suppose, finally, the unthinkable thing, that she—he could hardly
formulate even the thought; he couldn't have uttered it—loved him.
What did he know of her? Who was she? What did she know of adult
life? What were her little day-by-day tastes and impulses, such as
make or break any human companionship...? And who was he?
What right had he to take on his shoulders the responsibility for a
human life... a delicately joyous little life? For that was what it came
down to. It came to him, now, like a ray of blipdirig light, that he
who quickens the soul of a girl must carry the burden of that soul to
his grave. At times during the night he thought wistfully of his
freedom, of his pleasant, selfish solitude and the inexigent
companionship of his work.
His suit-case lay on the one chair. He drew it over; got out the
huge, linen-mounted map of the Chinese Empire that is published by
the China Inland Mission, and studied the roads about T'ainan. That
from the east—his present route—swung to the south on emerging
from the hills, and approached the city nearly from that direction.
Here, instead of turning up into the city, he could easily enough
strike south on the valley road, perhaps reaching an apparently
sizable village called Hung Chan by night.
He decided to do that, and afterward to push southwest. It should
be possible to find a way out along the rivers tributary to the
Yangtse, reaching that mighty stream at either Ichang or Hankow.
And he would work diligently, budding up again the life that had
been so quickly and lightly overset. At least, for the time. He must
try himself out This riding his emotions wouldn't do. At some stage
of the complicated experience it was going to be necessary to stop
and think. Of course, if he should find after a reasonable time, say a
few months, that the emotion persisted, why then, with his personal
freedom established, he might write Betty, simply stating his case.
And after all this, on the following afternoon, dusty, tired of body
and soul, Jonathan Brachey rode straight up to the East Gate of
T'ainan-fu.
 CHAPTER IX—KNOTTED LIVES
1

I
F Brachey had approached that East Gate a year later he would
have rolled comfortably into the city in a rickshaw (which has
followed the white man into China) along a macadamized road
bordered by curbing of concrete from the new railway station. But in
the spring of 1907 there was no station, no pavement, not a
rickshaw. The road was a deep-rutted way, dusty in dry weather,
muddy in wet, bordered by the crumbling shops and dwellings found
on the outskirts of every Chinese city. A high, bumpy little bridge of
stone spanned the moat.
Over this bridge rode Brachey, in his humble cart, sitting fiat under
a span of tattered matting, surrounded and backed by his boxes and
bales of food and water and his personal baggage. John and the
cook rode behind on mules. The muleteers walked.
Under the gate were lounging soldiers, coolies, beggars, and a
money-changer or two with their bags of silver lumps, their strings
of copper cash and their balanced scales. Two of the soldiers sprang
forward and stopped the cart. Despite their ragged uniforms (of a
dingy blue, of course, like all China, and capped with blue turbans)
these were tall, alert men. Brachey was rapidly coming to recognize
the Northern Chinese as a larger, browner, more vigorous type of
being than the soft little yellow men of the South with whom he had
long been familiar in the United States as well as in the East. A mure
dangerous man, really, this northerner.
Brachey leaned back on his baggage and watched the little
encounter between his John and the two soldiers. Any such
conversation in China is likely to take up a good deal of time, with
many gestures, much vehemence of speech and an 'ncreasing
volume of interference from the inevitable curious crowd. The cook
and the two muleteers joined the argument, Brachey had learned
before the first evening that this interpreter of his had no English
beyond the few pidgin phrases common to all speech along the
coast. And since leaving Shau T'ing it had transpired that the man's
Tientsin-Peking dialect sounded strange in the ears of Hansi John
was now in the position of an interpreter who could make headway
in neither of the languages in which he was supposed to deal.
Brachey didn't mind. It kept the man still. And he had learned years
earlier that the small affairs of routine traveling can be managed
with but few spoken words. But just now, idly watching the little
scene, he would have liked to know what it meant.
Finally John came to the cart, followed by shouts from the soldiers
and the crowd.
“Card wanchee,” he managed to say.
“Card? No savvy,” said Brachey.
“Card,” John nodded earnestly.
Brachey produced his personal card, bearing his name in English
and the address of a New York club.
John studied it anxiously, and then passed it to one of the soldiers.
That official fingered it; turned it over; discussed it with his fellow.
Another discussion followed.
Brachey now lost interest. He filled and lighted his pipe; then drew
from a pocket a small leather-bound copy of The Bible in Spain,
opened at a bookmark, and began reading.
There was a wanderer after his own heart—George Borrow! An
eager adventurer, at home in any city of any clime, at ease in any
company, a fellow with gipsies, bandits, Arabs, Jews of Gibraltar and
Greeks of Madrid, known from Mogadore to Moscow. Bor-row's
missionary employment puzzled him as a curious inconsistency; his
skill at making much of every human contact was, to the
misanthropic Brachey, enviable; his genius for solitude, his self-
sufficiency in every state, whether confined in prison at Madrid or
traversing alone the dangerous wilderness of Galicia, were to
Brachey points of fine fellowship. This man needed no wife, no
friend. His enthusiasm for the new type of human creature or the
unfamiliar tongue never weakened.
The cart jolted, creaking, forward, into the low tunnel that served
as a gateway through the massive wall. A soldier walked on either
hand. Two other soldiers walked in the rear. The crowd, increasing
every moment, trailed off behind. Small boys jeered, even threw bits
of dirt and stones, one of which struck a soldier and caused a brief
diversion.
They creaked on through the narrow, crowded streets of the city.
A murmur ran ahead from shop to shop and corner to corner.
Porters, swaying under bending bamboo, shuffled along at a
surprising pace and crowded past. Merchants stood in doorways and
puffed at lung pipes with tiny nickel bowls as the strange parade
went by.
Finally it stopped. Two great studded gates swung inward, and the
cart lurched into the courtyard of an inn.
Brachey appropriated a room, sent John for hot water, and coolly
shaved. Then he stretched out on the folding cot above its square of
matting, refilled his pipe and resumed his Borrow.

W
ithin half an hour fresh soldiers appeared, armed with
carbines and revolvers, and settled themselves comfortably,
two of them, by his door; two others taking up a position at
the compound gate.
They brought a letter, in Chinese characters, on red paper in a
buff and red envelope, which Brachey examined with curiosity.
“No savvy,” he said.
 But the faithful John, inarticulate from confusion and fright could
not translate.
Between this hour in mid-afternoon and early evening, six of these
documents were passed in through Brachey's door. With the last
one, John appeared to see a little light.
“Number one policeman wanchee know pidgin belong you,” he
explained laboriously.
That would doubtless mean the police minister. So they wanted to
know his business! But as matters stood, with no other medium of
communication than John's patient but bewildered brain, explanation
would be difficult. Brachey reached for his book and read on.
Something would have to happen, of course. It really hardly
mattered what. He even felt a little relief. The authorities might
settle his business for him. Pack him off. It would be better. M.
Pourmont's letter to Griggsby Doane had burned in his pocket for
two days. It had seemed to press him, like the hand of fate, to
Betty's very roof. Now, since he had become—the simile rose—a
passive shuttlecock, a counterplay of fate might prove a way out of
his dilemma.
He had chicken fried in oil for his dinner. And John ransacked the
boxes for dainties; as if the occasion demanded indulgence.
At eight John knocked with shaking hands at his door. It was dark
in the courtyard, and a soft April rain was falling. Two fresh soldiers
stood there, each with carbine on back and a lighted paper lantern
in band. A boy from the inn held two closed umbrellas of oiled paper.
“Go now,” said John, out of a dry throat.
“Go what side?” asked Brachey, surveying the little group.
John could not answer.
Brachey compressed his lips; stood there, knocking his pipe
against the door-post. Then, finally, he put on overcoat and rubber
overshoes, took one of the umbrellas, and set forth.
 3

T
hey walked a long way through twisting, shadowy streets, first
a soldier with the boy from the inn, then Brachey under his
umbrella, then John under another, then the second soldier.
Dim figures finished past them. Once the quaint waihng of stringed
instruments floated out over a compound wall. They passed through
a dark tunnel that must have been one of the city gates; then on
through other streets.
They stopped at a gate house. A door opened, and yellow
lamplight fell warmly across the way. Brachey found himself stepping
up into a structure that was and yet was not Chinese. A smiling old
gate-keeper received him with striking courtesy, and, to his surprise,
in English.
“Will you come with me, sir?”
John and the soldiers waited in the gate house.
Brachey followed the old man across a paved court. His pulse
quickened. Where were they bringing him?
Through a window he saw a white woman sitting at a desk, under
an American lamp.
He mounted stone steps, left his coat and hat in a homelike front
hall. The servant led the way up a flight of carpeted stairs.
On the top step, Brachey paused. At the end of the corridor, where
a chair or two, a table, bookcase, and lamp made a pleasant little
lounge, a young woman sat quietly reading. She looked up; sat very
still, gazing straight at him out of a white face. It was Betty. His
heart seemed to stop.
Then a man stood before him. A little, dusty blond man. They
were clasping hands. He was ushered rather abruptly into a study.
The door closed.
 The little man said something twice. It proved to be, “I am Mr.
Boatwright,” and he was looking down at the much-thumbed card;
Brachey's own card.
Brachey was fighting to gather his wits. Why hadn't he spoken to
Betty, or she to him? Would she wait there to see him? If not, how
could he reach her?... He must reach her, of course. He knew now
that through all his confusion of mind and spirit he had come
straight to her.

T
he little man was nervous, Brachey observed; even jumpy. He
hurried about, drawing down the window-shades. Then he sat
at a desk and with twitching fingers rolled a pencil about. He
cleared his throat.
“You've come in from the railroad?” he asked.... “Yes? Do you
bring news?”
“No,” said Brachey coldly.
“What gossip have your boys picked up along the road, may I
ask?”
Back and forth, back and forth, his fingers twitched the pencil.
Bradley's eyes narrowly followed the movement. After a little, he
replied:
“I have no information from my boys.”
“Seven years ago”—thus Mr. Boatwright, huskily, “they killed all
but a few of us. Now the trouble has started again—a similar trouble
They attacked our station up at So T'ung yesterday. Mr. Doane is on
his way there now. He left this noon. That is why they referred your
case to me. Oh. yes, I should have told you—the tao-tai, Chang Chili
Ting, has asked me to get from you an explanation of your
appearance here without a passport. But perhaps your card explains.
You come simply as a journalist?”
 Brachey bowed.
“You have no connection w ith the Ho Shan Company?”
“None”
“Chang is taking up your case this evening with the provincial
judge, Pao Ting Chuan. Pao is to give you an audience to-morrow, I
believe, at noon. I will act as your interpreter.” Mr. Boatwright
paused, and sighed. “I am very busy.”
“I regret this intrusion on your time,” said Brachey. It was
impossible for him to be more than barely courteous to such a man
as this.
“Oh, that's all right,” Boatwright replied vaguely. “The audience
will probably be at noon. Then you will come back here with me for
tiffin.” He sighed again; then went on. “They shot one of Pourmont's
white men. Through the lungs.... You must have seen Pourmont at
Ping Yang, as you came through.”
“I called on him.”
“Didn't he tell you?”
“No. He advised against my coming on.”
“Of course. It's really very difficult. He wants us all to get out, as
far as his compound. But, you see, our predicament is delicate.
Already they've attacked one of our outposts. But the trouble may
not spread. We can't draw in our people and leave at the first sign of
difficulty. It would be interpreted as weakness not only on our part
but on the part of all the white governments as well. Mr. Doane, I
know”—he said this rather regretfully—“would never consent to
that.... Mr. Doane is a strong man. We shall all breathe a little more
easily when he is safely back. If he should not get back—well, you
will see that I must face this situation—-the decision would fall on
me. That's why I asked you for news. I have to consider the problem
from every angle. We have other stations about the province and we
must plan to draw all our people in before we can even consider a
general retreat.”
 Brachey heard part of this. He wished the man would keep still:
His own racing thoughts were with that pale girl in the hall. Was she
still there? He must plan. He must be prepared with something to
say, if they should meet face to face.
As it turned out, they met on the stairs. Betty was coming up. She
paused; looked up, then down. The color stole back into her face;
flooded it. She raised her hand, hesitatingly.
 Brachey heard and felt the surprise of Boatwright, behind him.
The little man said:
“Oh!”
Brachey felt the warm little hand in his. It should have been, easy
to explain their acquaintance; to speak of the ship, ask after the
Hasmers. In the event, however, it proved impossible, all he could
say—he heard the dry hard tones issuing from his own lips:
“Oh, how do you do! How have you been?”
Betty said, after too long a pause, glancing up momentarily at Mr.
Boatwright:
“Mr. Brachey was on the steamer.”
It was odd, that little situation. It might so easily have escaped
being a situation, had not their own turbulent hearts made it so. But
now, of course, neither could explain why they hadn't spoke before
he went into the study. And little, distrait Mr. Boatwright was wide-
eyed.
The situation passed from mildly bad to a little worse. Betty went
on up the stairs; and Brachey went down.
The casual parting came upon Brachey like a tragedy. It was
unthinkable. Something personal he must say. On the morrow it
might be worse, with a whole household crowding about. It was a
question if he could face her at all, that way. He got to the bottom
step; then, with an apparently offhand, “I beg your pardon!”
brushed past the now openly astonished Boatwright and bolted back
up the stairs.
Betty moved a little way along the upper hall; hesitated; glanced
back.
He spoke, low, in her ear. “I must see you!”
Her head inclined a little.
“Once! I must see you once. I can't leave it this way. Then I will
go. To-morrow—at tiffin—if we can't talk together—you must give
me some word. A note, perhaps, telling me how I can see you alone.
There is one thing I must tell you.”
“Please!” she murmured. There were tears in her eyes. They
scalded his own high-beating heart, those tears.
“You will plan it? I am helpless. But I must see you—tell you!”
He thought her head inclined again.
“You will? You'll give me a note? Oh, promise!”
“Yes,” she whispered; and slipped away into another room.
So this is why he had to come to T'ainan-fu—to tell her the
tremendous news that he would one day be free! And she had
promised to arrange a meeting!
Never in all his cold life had Jonathan Brachey experienced such a
thrill as followed that soft “Yes.”
Not a word passed between him and Boatwright until they stood
in the gate house. Then, for an instant, their eyes met. He had to
fight back the burning triumph that was in his own. But the little
man seemed glad to look away; he was even evasive.
“You'd better be around about half past eleven in the morning,”
said he. “We'll go to the yamen from here. We must have blue carts
and the extra servants. Good night.” And again he sighed.
That was all. Boatwright let him go like that, back to the dirty,
dangerous native inn.
He fell in behind the leading soldier, holding his umbrella high and
marching stiffly, like a conqueror, through the sucking mud.