ucked roughly into his big boots and a little cane, the
only weapon he ever carried--"I am too hot tempered for any other" he
would often say laughingly of himself--in his hand. This simplicity,
this utter absence of affectation, was the keynote to his
character--just as it was the keynote of Robert Hart's character.
Because both possessed it to an unusual degree, each understood the
other--and at once.

[Illustration: SIR ROBERT HART ABOUT 1866.]

Within a week of the I.G.'s arrival Gordon's fit of gloom, brought on
by the affair of the Wangs, was dissipating; within two it was gone,
for a character of such violent "downs" must have equally mercurial
"ups"; within three he capitulated to argument and agreed to go back
to Soochow and see Li. Impulsive and generous as ever, he then wished
that Hart should say he (Hart) had induced him to come to Li. "That
will give you immense influence with the Chinese," he declared. But
Hart would not have it so; he preferred to tell Li that Gordon
had come of his own free will, knowing that this would please Li
personally far more.

The three-cornered meeting passed off well. As little as possible
was said about past disagreements, as much as possible about future
agreements, and the end of it was that Gordon agreed to take the field
again. At the same time the I.G. took care to suggest the removal of
an excuse for future misunderstandings in the person of an officious,
inefficient interpreter whom Robert Hart himself described as a
"'Talkee talkee, me-no-savey,' the sort of person whose attempt at
Mandarin [official Chinese] is even viler than his English."

There then remained nothing more to do in Soochow, and Hart and Gordon
started back together to Quinsan, though not before they had visited
the historic Soochow stockades together, and Gordon, taking his friend
over every disputed foot of ground, had vividly described the bloody
fighting there--the victory so pleasant to remember, the tragedy so
difficult to forget.

I doubt if anything he ever did in China gave Robert Hart greater
pleasure than this reconciliation, or if there was any other single
episode in his career in which he took more pride; though he spoke of
it so seldom and so modestly that scarcely any one--certainly not
the public--knew of what he had done. It cost him a few friends among
minor officials who thought that negotiations should have passed
through their hands rather than his. But his old friend Sir