By-and-by they told him all about the expedition that, accompanied by his father, had been sent down the road from Pekin, how terribly it had punished Pao-Ting-Fu for its murder of missionaries, and how it had gone on to Cheng-Ting-Fu to find all the foreigners who had taken refuge behind its brave walls safe and unharmed. He learned of his parents' joyful reunion, and how they had hastened back to Pekin and his bedside. Gradually, too, he was told the thrilling story of his father's escape from the dreadful city of Tai-Yuan, of his perilous wanderings through Shan-Si and Ho-nan, until finally he found himself on a branch of the Han River, down which he floated for many nights in a skiff to Hankow. From there he was taken on a United States gun-boat to Shanghai, where he met Mr. Bishop, the engineer, and learned that his boy had plunged into the very heart of the storm of wrath then centring about Pekin.
During his days of convalescence, while Rob was learning of all these things, he saw much of the Lorimers, who had refused to leave Pekin until assured that the lad, to whom they felt they were so largely indebted for their own safety, was himself out of danger.
Then the two families left the city in which they had suffered and endured so much, and travelled together over the reconstructed railway to Tien-Tsin, where they took steamer for Shanghai. There Rob found his trunk, together with the money due him for services rendered, that had been forwarded from Canton by Mr. Bishop. He also found several letters from the engineer, who had learned so highly to appreciate the lad's pluck, manliness, and ready resource during the long journey they had taken together that he now offered him a permanent and well-paid position on the proposed American railway.
About this same time Mr. Lorimer, who was president of a great American life insurance company, offered Dr. Hinckley the post of chief medical examiner in China for his company, which was about to extend its operations into that country.
It is almost needless to say that both these offers were promptly accepted, and before the Lorimers took steamer for America and the last stage of their eventful journey around the world, Dr. and Mrs. Hinckley were already settled in the Shanghai house that was to be their future home.
Rob left them there when he went to Canton to assume his new duties; but he rejoins them in July of each year, when father, mother, and son go together to Japan for a happy month among its life-giving mountains.
The strong friendship cemented between Annabel and Rob during those terrible Pekin days has since been maintained by means of frequent letters, and both await with eager anticipations the autumn of 1904, when the Hinckleys are to revisit their own country and join the Lorimers on a trip to the World's Fair at St. Louis.
In talking it all over, Mrs. Hinckley often exclaims: "How wonderful are the ways of Providence!" and whenever Rob hears her speak thus, he adds:
"Yes, mother, and how splendidly were the designs of Providence carried out by Chinese Jo!"