Robert Hart, in his new role of military arbitrator, left Shanghai on January 19th by boat, creeping slowly through the canals.  The desolation along both banks was pitiful; every village had been burned, every field trampled; not a living thing was in sight—­not even a dog—­but the creeks were choked with corpses.  No man could pass through such a dreary waste unmoved, least of all one who had the slightest power to alter the sad conditions, and Robert Hart met Li at Soochow with his determination to do all in his power to reconcile him with Gordon, and so end the war quickly, greatly strengthened.

Li promptly explained his action by justifying his policy from his own point of view, and finally ended by saying, “Do tell Gordon I never meant to do it; I meant to keep my word as to the Princes’ safe-conduct; but when I saw those fellows come in with their hair long, the very sign of rebellion, and only wearing the white badge of submission in their buttonholes, I thought it such insolence that anger overcame me, and I gave the order for their execution.  But it was my doing, not Gordon’s; my safe-conduct, not Gordon’s, that had been violated.  Tell him that I am ready to proclaim far and wide that he had nothing to do with it, so that he loses no reputation by it.  Can you not make peace with him for me?”

To find Gordon at that time was no easy matter.  He was moving about very rapidly.  With his wonderful eye for country, he saw at a glance—­almost by instinct—­a point that ought to be taken in order to command other points, and wasted no time over the taking of it.  Thus he was never long in any particular spot, and Robert Hart had a week’s search before he came up with him at Quinsan.  Truly that was an exciting week’s journey, I can promise you, dodging up and down canals, expecting every moment to run round a corner into a rebel camp—­yet fortunately never doing it—­in fact, doing nothing at all more exciting than listening to the cries of startled pheasants.

Gordon greeted the I.G. very cordially and held a parade in his honour, just by way of celebrating his arrival.  That march past was unforgettable.  Though the soldiers were commonplace enough, plain and businesslike the officers, of whom Gordon had about thirty of all ages, sizes and tastes, usually designed their own uniforms, which were sometimes fantastic, to say the least.  On this great occasion you may be sure none had neglected to appear in the fullest of full dress, with highly comical results.  Indeed their efforts amused Gordon so much that all the time they were advancing he kept repeating as he rubbed his hands gleefully together, “Go it, ye cripples; go it, ye cripples!”

By contrast, he himself, the commander of them all, appeared so simple in his long blue frock coat—­the old uniform of the Engineers—­with his trousers tucked 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.