TWO:It was not one lark but many that were carolling specks against the blue, as Keeling walked along the ridge of the down next day, to where after an upland mile it dipped into the hollow where he and Norah had met before, and where they would meet again now. The afternoon was warm and windless, and the squalls and showers of yesterday had been translated into the vivider green that clothed the slopes. But all this epiphany of spring that had so kindled his heart before, passed by him to-day quite unobserved: he saw only the tops of the trees, which, climbing up on the sides of the hollow for which he was bound, fringed the edge of the ridge. Soon he had reached that, the track dipped over down the slope, and on each side, between the oak-trunks, and the stumps of the felled hazels, there was spread one continuous sheet of azure, as if the sky had flooded the ground with itself. But he hardly saw that even, for sitting on the bank, where, at the bottom of the hollow, the stream crossed the track, was Norah."I could go on with a long account of the tortures in China, but they are not very pleasant reading, and, besides, some of them are too horrible for belief. I will stop with the torture known as 'the hot-water snake,' which consists of a coil of thin tubing of tin or pewter in the form of a serpent. One of these coils is twisted around each arm of the victim, and another around his body, in such a way that the head of the snake is higher than any other part. Then they pour boiling water into the mouth of the snake, and the flesh of the prisoner is burned and scalded in the most terrible manner. This punishment is said to be used rarely, and only[Pg 374] on persons accused of crimes against the government. It is too horrible to be popular, even among the most cold-blooded people in the world.

$45/Month