midnight
That whole region in those days needed only a spark to set it aflame against all foreigners . `` There was one surprising bit of news , something that gave me a great desire to live . Ho Sen , poor , faithful Ho Sen , had escaped from Red Knife . He had come crawling to Hartley 's bungalow at midnight several days after the raid , carrying in his arms the boy , and had fallen unconscious at the doorsteps . Hartley took them in and found the boy little the worse for his experiences , but Ho Sen died that same night and had been in his grave more than two weeks when Hartley told me the story . Meanwhile they had given up hope of ever seeing me alive again , and when the colony decided that it was unsafe for the women to stay at Tung-sha any longer they sent the boy down to Shanghai with an American missionary by the name of Singleton , who was going back to the United States . She had become deaf during her service in China and was returning to the States for treatment .