As per standard English Grammar: "lead to" in the 1st sentence works as a finite verb. It refers to some action. "leading to" in the 2nd sentence works as a participle (adjective). It especially refers to those steps that lead to the palace. you can rewrite the 2nd sentence as ..... "he informed the editor that he had been arrested while counting the 1084 steps that led to the fifteen-foot wall which surrounded the president's palace." Note the change: "leading to" that qualified the steps as an adjective, has been replaced by "that (which) led to". Here "that" is the subject and "led to" works as a verb in past tense. Since "leading to" is NOT a verb (rather, an adjective), we can NEVER change it's tense. Can we? another simple example: 1. I saw a man who was walking down the street. ("was walking" -- a verb in past continuous tense. The subject is "who".) 2. I saw a man walking down the street. ("walking" is a participle that works as a qualifier for that man who was doing a certain thing...in this case, "walking down the street"..... so, the entire phrase "walking down the street" works as an adjective (qualifier) for that man.) Check your grammar book for a detailed discussion on Participle, Gerund, Phrase and Clause. ** "here are two sentences below written in one passage:(from our English class book)" ...... ----- there is no word as "writed"... It's "Write - Wrote - Written". All the best ^^

in the first sentense "lead to" is verb in the second sentense "leading to" is adj.

这个分析下句子结构： 1 "hundreds of steps lead to the high wall which surrounds the president's palace." hundreds of steps是主语，lead是动词。 后面的which...修饰wall. 2 "he informed the editor that he had been arrested while counting the 1084 steps leading to the fifteen-foot wall which surrounded the president's palace." leading.....整个都是修饰steps. 这里leadings 是分词，非谓语。

1. <Subject> - lead to - ...This is a standard sentence. 2. "leading" is used to connect two phrases. This is best studied from you grammar book. There are good explanations and exercises there.