, and many brave lives were
lost.

On 14th December 1884, Gordon wrote to his sister: "This may be the
last letter you will receive from me, for we are on our last legs,
owing to the delay of the expedition. However, God rules all, and, as
He will rule to His glory and our welfare, His will be done. . . .

"I am quite happy, thank God, and, like Lawrence, I have '_tried_ to do
my duty.'"

On the same day he wrote in his journal:

"I have done my best for the honour of our country. Good-bye.--C. G.
Gordon."

The last message of all was one that bore no date, and was smuggled out
of Khartoum in a cartridge case by one who had been his servant:--

"What I have gone through I cannot describe. The Almighty God will
help me."

In the camp of the Mahdi lay an Austrian prisoner, Slatin Pasha.

On the 15th of January 1885 he heard vigorous firing from Khartoum.
Gordon and his garrison were preventing the Mahdists from keeping in
their possession a fort which they had just taken.

In the days that followed, the firing went on, but Gordon's ammunition
was nearly done, and he and his men were weak and spent with hunger.

On the night of the 25th Slatin heard "the deafening discharge of
thousands of rifles and guns; this lasted for a few minutes, then only
occasional shots were heard, and now all was quiet again."

He lay wide awake, wondering if this was the great attack on Khartoum
that the Mahdi had always planned.

A few hours later, three black soldiers entered the prison bearing
something in a bloody cloth. They threw it at the prisoner's feet, and
he saw that it was the head of General Gordon.

When the relieving army reached Khartoum, they found the Mahdi's
banners of black and green flaunting from its walls, and the guns that
had so bravely defended it turned against them. They had come too late.

A traitor in the camp had hastened the end, and Gordon had fallen,
hacked to pieces, while trying to rally his troops.

For hours after he fell, massacre and destruction went on in the city.

Fourteen years later, Lord Kitchener and his soldiers avenged that
massacre, and marched into Khartoum.

The Mahdi was dead. He who boasted that he was immortal had died from
poison given him by a woman whom he had cruelly used. The Mahdi's
successors had fallen before a conquering English army.

When the Mahdists sacked and burned the Governor's Palace, they forgot
to destroy the trees and the rose bushes that Go