that in
killing him the King would only confer a favour on him, opening a door
he must not open for himself.

"Then my power has no terrors for you?" said the King.

"None whatever," replied Gordon, and the King, who was used to rule by
terror, had no more to say.

This mission over, Gordon, utterly worn out, and broken in health,
returned to Egypt, and resigned his post as Governor-General of the
Soudan.

The slaves that he had set free used to try to kiss his feet and the
hem of his garment. To this day there is a name known in Egypt and in
the Soudan as that of a man who scorned money, who had no fear of any
man, who did not even fear death, whose mercy was as perfect as his
uprightness. And the name of that man is Gordon Pasha.

"Give us another Governor like Gordon Pasha," was the cry of the
Soudanese when the Mahdi uprose to be a scourge to the Soudan.

CHAPTER VI

KHARTOUM

Gordon left Egypt in December 1879, "not a day too soon," the doctor
said, for he was ill, not only from hard work, but from overwork.

The burden he had carried on his shoulders through those years was the
burden of the whole of the Soudan.

He was ordered several months of complete rest. But those days of rest
were only castles that Gordon had built in his day-dreams, when burning
days and bitter nights had made him long for ease.

Early in 1880 he became Secretary to Lord Ripon, Viceroy of India. He
remained only a few months in India, and then went to China, in answer
to an urgent message from his old friend, Li Hung Chang.

China and Russia were on the brink of a great war. The Chinese
courtiers wished to fight, but Li Hung Chang longed for peace.

"Come and help me to keep peace," he said to Gordon. And "Chinese
Gordon" did not fail him.

"I cannot desert China in her present crisis," he wrote.

His stay in China was not long, but when he returned to England he had
made peace between two empires.

He had only been home for a short time when again he was on the wing.

One day at the War Office he met a brother officer, who complained of
his bad luck at having to go and command the Engineers at such a dull
place as the Island of Mauritius.

"Oh, don't worry yourself," said Gordon, "I will go for you: Mauritius
is as good for me as anywhere else."

For a year he remained there--a peaceful, if dull year, but in March
1882 he was made a Major-General, and relieved from his post.

For a short time he was