as this, with
just such a howling wind--when together they had gone to meet Gordon,
and the sampan taking them ashore had capsized, throwing them both
into the icy water.

Occasionally then the I.G. would retaliate with reminiscences of Ah
Fong making the Grand Tour of Europe with him in 1878--how he
kissed his hands to the winning French chambermaids, and called out
"Allewalla, Allewalla!" ("Au revoir, au revoir!"), or how he had
answered the horrified ladies of Ireland who inquired about his
duties,--"Morning time my brush master's clothes, night time my bring
he brandy and water."

[Illustration: FRONT DOOR OF SIR ROBERT HART'S HOUSE, PEKING]

In this age of uninterested or inanimate "helps," a servitor like Ah
Fong is about as rare as an archaeopteryx. Devotion and loyalty such
as his are fast dying out of the world, but they make a pretty picture
when one does find them, and I like to tell how the old servant
grieved at the thought of separation from one who represented his
whole horizon.

The I.G., too, must have felt some sentiment at leaving the faces
to which he was accustomed, the house which had grown dear in almost
thirty years of uninterrupted solitude. It is just these associations
which are most intangible, which sound most trivial set down in black
and white, that often take the strongest hold upon us. Habit, the
little old dame, creeps in one day, sits by our fire, amuses us,
comforts us, occupies us, and--before we know it--we feel a wrench if
we are obliged to move away.

Nevertheless we must all move some time or another. Everybody
does--even the I.G., whose going had been so often prophesied and
again so often contradicted that he had come to be regarded as the one
fixed star twinkling unselfishly in the heaven of duty.

The morning of his going, I remember, broke fine and clear. The sky
was beautifully blue, like an inverted turquoise bowl. The little
railway station must have been startled half out of its wits by all
the people flocking in. Such a thing in all its history had never
happened before. Under the low grey roof trooped guards of honour
sent by every nationality--all for the sake of one man who was only a
civilian, and nothing but a private individual. There were this
man's own nationals in the central position--a company of splendid
Highlanders with pipers, and stretching away down the platform there
were American marines, Italian sailors, Dutch marines and Japanese
soldiers.