The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.) 1908-1924, 1914-06-20

IL he allowed his exhausted muscles to
rest, he would continue onward twist
ed like an acrobat or a man cruclied.
After a while the numbness almost
overcame the sense OF pain.
He longed for death now, craved for
1t as one In agony who, feeling its In
evitable approach, welcomes the dark
ness with It's merciful surcease Of
pain. The chilling winds bit him to
the bone. his lids we're heavy with
sleep, and yet he dared not sleep, lest
he lose his balance and fall. to awake
twisting and writing on those props
of legs, made n with the terrible
machine. The balloon-shaped swelling
in the bottom OF his overcoat had
grown much smaller; still, not more
than half the gasoline had been con-
sumed, and only half the night was
over when he rushed out of the dark
ness into a glare of lights. This was
Moscow, where, in anticipation OF his
arrival a switch had been set to carry
him eastward over the single track
Of the trans-Siberian railway. He
heard the hoarse shout of the mutt
tude. He heard the rhythmic chant Of
the priests who prayed for him. Even
to Moscow the news had been tele-
graphed, and east Of this, too, for in
Mini Novgorod thousands watched
for the traveller who never arrived.
Lights. lights, and always lights. They
burned his eyeballs and scared his
brain. Then Moscow was past, and
now he was speeding through the for
ests again.
Wolves howled in his track, wild
creatures sprang aside through thick
cts and underground. And still he
never paused. The gentle summit of
the Ural Mountains hardly checked
the velocity of his career. They
were passed; he was in Asia, sweep
ing over the frozen plains, crossing
broad forest belts when dawn showed
in the sky.
When four and twenty hours had
passed the man was nothing but an au-
tomaton. His face and lips dripped
blood from the branding whips of the
wind, his legs and feet, his hands and
arms and throat were cold as marble
and no less stif. The muscles of his
back, Injured to their dreadful strain,
had ossified, and as some Hindoo fakir
holds his disabled arm aloft, stir and
immovable after it has been fastened
in this position, through years Of
pain, so he rushed on, erect, unbend-
ing. a frozen statue, and consciousness
only a Pickering spark in the recesses
of his brain.
The sun rose in the sky. Clouds
flung their vast shadows across the
plains, blushing with the first flowers
Of spring. Once a troop train, bound
eastward, rolled out of the distance,
and, shouting wildly, the terrified sol
diers in the cars fred their rifles at
him. But he was gone, a speck in the
east, before the bullets fell.
Nothing could stay him now. If the
gasoline held put he would rush on
until he plunged, at ~Vladivostock, the
end of the line, the end of Asia, into
the cooling sea. He would die there,
seven thousand miles from Spa, he
who had paced the Casino only two
nights before, secure in the belief that
he had shaken off the grip of his inn
placable enemy. In his despair tears
gushed from his eyes. Death faced him
he might die thus, travelling, and his
frozen corpse would run on and on,
while the lost soul went-whither?
He sought for an answer to his own
question and could find none. His
life had been heaped up with wicked
ness. He had plundered and robbed
and Toasted in the high places while
his victims writhed under the wheel of
the %juggernaut of his greed. For the
first time in twenty years he prayed
for mercy, that some chance might be
given him to live, to make atonement.
He was half way across Siberia. He
had bounded the vast expanse of Bal
kal, shimmering in the noon sun, and
now the country grew more settled.
Scared, yellow faces peered at him
from behind hedgerows. Men with pig
tails and women who hobbled as they
tried to run, screaming, from him,
were eel But in his newborn love
for men he welcome the sight even of
these; they were no longer aliens but
brothers.
As a man remote from his body,
that body which he could feel no long.
er, he found himself wondering how
he had noticed these, when all had
been but a blur. And suddenly a vivid
thought leaped through his brain. He
must be stacking speed. He tried
to bend his head to look downward,
but had no longer power over his stiff
fened muscles. Presently there was no
longer doubt Of it. The gyroscope was
~slackening. The gasoline was nearly
exhausted and the fur coat tapped
Imply about his knees.
He went more slowly. Now he was
travelling no faster than a quick train.
The speed became that OF a slow
train, then Of an automobile, a horse
drawn vehicle. a running man. And,
with a rafting click. the machine
stopped, and, finally halted. Then,
the cohesive force Withdrawn, it top
pied from the line.
Edward Philemus Hopkins fell to
the ground as a statue falls, In the
center of a Chinese hamlet. When he
was raised the men who carried him
held him as they might have carried
an arm of a tree.
There is a famous mission school to-
day in Kiakhta, the fame of which has
spread far south among the yellow
people of China, and far north among