parted perfect friends. The brusqueness of my leaving was
unavoidable, inasmuch as my stay would have put me into the
possession of secrets of State that--considering my decision
eventually to leave--I ought not to know. Certainly I might have
stayed a month or two, had a pain in the hand, and gone quietly;
but the whole duties were so distasteful that I felt, being
pretty callous as to what the world says, that it was better to
go at once."

If a full explanation is sought of the reasons why Gordon repented of
his decision, and determined to leave an uncongenial position without
delay, it may be found in a consideration of the two following
circumstances. His views as to what he held to be the excessive
payment of English and other European servants in Asiatic countries
were not new, and had been often expressed. They were crystallised in
the phrase, "Why pay a man more at Simla than at Hongkong?" and had
formed the basis of his projected financial reform in Egypt in 1878,
and they often found expression in his correspondence. For instance,
in a letter to the present writer, he proposed that the loss accruing
from the abolition of the opium trade might be made good by reducing
officers' pay from Indian to Colonial allowances. With Gordon's
contempt for money, and the special circumstances that led to his not
wanting any considerable sum for his own moderate requirements and few
responsibilities, it is not surprising that he held these views; but
no practical statesman could have attempted to carry them out. During
the voyage to India the perception that it would be impossible for
Lord Ripon to institute any special reorganisation on these lines led
him to decide that it would be best to give up a post he did not like,
and he wrote to his sister to this effect while at sea, with the
statement that it was arranged that he should leave in the following
September or October.

He reached Bombay on the 28th of May, and his resignation was received
and accepted on the night of the 2nd June. What had happened in that
brief interval of a few days to make him precipitate matters? There is
absolutely no doubt, quite apart from the personal explanation given
by General Gordon, both verbally and in writing, to myself, that the
determining cause was the incident relating to Yakoob Khan.

That Afghan chief had been proclaimed and accepted as Ameer after the
death of his father, the Ameer Shere