"Then I am very sorry to say that he has gone to Hong-Kong, and will not return for a week."
"Oh!" cried Rob; "what shall I do? Perhaps you can tell me something about a reported massacre of missionaries at Wu Hsing. Did it really occur?"
"I believe it did, though that was before I came out; but I hope you hadn't any friends there."
"You poor fellow! That, indeed, is a bitter blow. May I ask your name?"
"Not a son of Dr. Mason Hinckley?" inquired the other, eagerly.
"Then you needn't worry any more, for Dr. Hinckley and his wife left for America just before the outbreak, and are a long way towards the land of safety by this time."
For a moment Rob's heart beat quick with joy and his face became radiant; then it clouded again as he said, quietly:
"I think you must be mistaken, sir; for I received a cablegram in America that my father was too ill to travel, and longed to see me before he died. That is the reason I am now here."
"No," asserted the stranger, whose name, as Rob afterwards learned, was Bishop, "I am confident there can be no mistake, for I saw Dr. and Mrs. Mason Hinckley in Hong-Kong. I was newly arrived, and had gone with an acquaintance to arrange for a lot of stuff to be taken aboard the Canton boat. While we were there, another boat of the same line came in from the upper Si Kiang. She had but two European passengers, a lady, and her husband who was so weak from illness that we assisted him to a carriage. My friend knew them slightly, and after they were gone he told me that they were a missionary doctor and his wife from Wu Hsing, that their name was Hinckley, that the doctor had been critically ill, but had most unexpectedly rallied, so that he was able to travel, and that they were to leave for the States on the _China_, which sailed that evening. All this was distinctly impressed on my mind by the news of the Wu Hsing outbreak, which came a week later, and I was glad to remember that two at least of the possible victims had escaped in time."
Rob listened breathlessly to these details, and, when Mr. Bishop finished speaking, he exclaimed: "They are alive, then, and safe! If I only had known, and stayed quietly where I was! Do you remember the date, sir, on which you saw them in Hong-Kong?"