"Father," said the boy, "I want to stay here with you. I am not afraid to die."
"No," the father replied. "If we are all killed, who will preach Jesus to these poor people?"
So, before the next day dawned, Ti-to said good-by, and started with Mr. Tien on his wanderings. That same afternoon Pastor Meng was in the chapel when a company of Boxers suddenly burst into the room and seized him. A Christian Chinese who was with him escaped over the back wall, and took the sad tidings to his friends. The Boxers dragged Pastor Meng to a temple, and there, having learned that his eldest son had fled, tortured him to make him tell Ti-to's hiding-place. But the secret was not revealed. In the early morning scores of Boxer knives slowly stabbed him to death. But the face of the Master smiled upon this brave soul, "faithful unto death."
Three days later, four of his children, his only sister and her two children, and the three missionary friends for whom he had laid down his life, were killed.
But what of the little one who had left home four days before? Determined that not one member of the family should be left, the Boxers searched for him in all directions. But Mr. Tien had taken Ti-to to the home of a relative only a few miles from Pao-ting-fu, and they escaped detection. This relative feared to harbor them more than two or three days, so they turned their faces northward, where a low range of sierra-like mountains was outlined against the blue sky. Seventeen miles from Pao-ting-fu, and not far from the home of an uncle of Mr. Tien's, they found a little cave in the mountainside, not high enough to allow them to stand upright. Here they crouched for twenty days. The uncle took them a little food, but to get water they were obliged to go three miles to a mountain village, stealing up to a well under cover of darkness. In that dark cave, hunger and thirst were their constant companions, and the howling of wolves at night made their mountain solitude fearsome.
Ti-to had lived for five days in this retreat when word was brought to him that father, brothers, sisters, aunt, cousins, and all the missionaries belonging to the three missions in Pao-ting-fu, had been cruelly massacred, and that churches, schools, homes, were all masses of charred ruins.
After twenty days of cave life, Mr. Tien's uncle sent them warning that Boxers were on their track, and that they must leave their mountain refuge immediately. Then began long, weary wanderings toward the southwest, over mountain roads, their plan being to go to Shansi. One day in their wanderings they had just passed the village of Chang-ma, about sixteen miles south of Pao-ting-fu, when a band of Boxers, some armed with rifles, some brandishing great swords, rushed after them, shouting, "Kill! kill! kill the secondary foreign devils!"
Escape was impossible. Before this howling horde had overtaken them, a man who was standing near them asked Ti-to, "Are you a Christian?"
"Yes," the boy replied. "My father and mother were Christians, and from a little child I have believed in Jesus."
"Do not be afraid," the stranger said; "I will protect you."