as a lunatic, to share the fate of his fifteen fellow-conspirators, but for the assistance of a woman who had been told off to wait upon him. To her he confided a note addressed to Dr Cantlie, a personal friend of long standing, under whom he had studied medicine in Hongkong; and she handed this to her husband, employed as waiter in the Legation, by whom it was safely delivered. He thus managed to communicate with the outer world; Lord Salisbury intervened, and he was released after a fortnight's detention.
Well might Sun Yat-sen now say—
"They little thought that day of pain
That one day I should come again."
More a revolutionary than ever, he soon set to work to collect funds, which flowed in freely from Chinese sources in all quarters of the world. At last, in September 1911, the train was fired, beginning with the province of Ssŭchʽuan, and within an incredibly short space of time, half China was ablaze. By the middle of October the Manchus were beginning to feel that a great crisis was at hand, and the Regent was driven to recall Yüan Shih-kʽai, whom he had summarily dismissed from office two years before, on the conventional plea that Yüan was suffering from a bad leg, but really out of revenge for his treachery to the late Emperor, which had
