[Illustration:  SIR ROBERT HART’S STABLES IN 1890.]

The very next evening at a dinner party at the French Legation some one told the I.G. of the new honour, gazetted an hour before, and how an Emperor, with a stroke of his Vermilion Pencil, had deprived the ghost of a grievance.

Equally romantic was a coincidence that happened when the I.G. was made a Baronet in 1893.  The question of arms then coming up, he made all possible enquiries concerning those which his family had a right to use.  Without doubt the Harts did bear arms in the days of William of Orange, when they were granted to the famous Dutchman Captain van Hardt who so distinguished himself at the Battle of the Boyne.  But after his death the family grew poor; the arms fell into disuse and were forgotten so completely that one descendant thought they might have been a hart rampant, while another declared they were a sheaf of burning wheat.

Robert Hart was not the man to grope long in a fog of mystery.  He decided the question once and for all by submitting a blazon of his own choice to the College of Heralds, and his design—­three fleurs de lis and a four-leaved shamrock—­was sanctioned, as it had not been previously applied for.

The search for the original arms was naturally given up then, but by the merest accident they were ultimately found.  Some member of the family happening years afterwards to stroll through a very old cemetery in Dublin, curiosity or idleness led him to examine the tombstones.  One in particular attracted his attention, perhaps because it was more dilapidated and tumble-down than the rest.  He gently scraped the moss from the inscription and found that he had stumbled on the long-forgotten tomb of Captain van Hardt, and underneath the hero’s name he found a coat-of-arms, half obliterated yet still recognizable.  It showed three fleurs de lis and a four-leaved shamrock.

But it must not be imagined that Robert Hart was the man to rest on his laurels or to regard honours as so many flags of truce entitling him to draw out, even for a time, of the battle of work.  From 1889 to 1903 he was deeply engaged on that very important business the Sikkim-Thibet Convention.  The Thibetans having crossed the border into Sikkim, a State protected by the British, the British in return sent an expedition into Thibet and, since there was trouble about the frontier, refused to go out again.  This was a very disagreeable predicament for China.  She turned, as usual, to the man who never ceased labouring on her behalf, and, as usual, he rose to the occasion.

Mr. James Hart, the I.G.’s brother, lately returned from delimitating the Tonkin frontier, was sent posthaste to assist the Amban, the Chinese Resident in Thibet.  As a result of this wise choice, the preliminary Treaty was put through by 1890, and the Chinese Customs opened stations in Thibet.  Three questions relative to trade, however, remained to be settled, and for three long years negotiations over these dragged on at Darjeeling.