Then he left China without taking one penny of reward.  Honors and wealth were poured at his feet, but he accepted only such as were merely honorary.  He was made a Ti-Tu—­the highest title to which a subject can attain—­and he received the Orders of the Star, the Yellow Jacket, and the Peacock’s Feather.  When, however, the Imperial messengers brought into his room great boxes containing L10,000 in coin, he drove them out in anger.  The money he divided amongst his troops.  And yet he might well have taken even a larger sum.  One who knew how deeply the empire was indebted to him, wrote, “Can China tell how much she is indebted to Colonel Gordon?  Would 20,000,000 taels repay the actual service he has rendered to the empire?”

Gordon returned home to England, and, avoiding all the flattering notice that was continually thrust upon him, he retired to his work at Gravesend, where, from 1865 to 1871, he labored at the construction of the Thames Defenses.

Here he passed six of the happiest years of his life—­in active work, in deep seclusion from the world of wealth and fashion, but in a state of happiness and peace.  His house was school, hospital, and almshouse, and he lived entirely for others.  “The poor, the sick, the unfortunate were welcome, and never did supplicant knock vainly at his door.”

Gutter children were his especial care.  These he cleansed and clothed, and the boys he trained for a life at sea.  His evening classes were his delight, and he read and taught his children with the same ardor with which he had led the Chinese troops into battle.  For the boys he found suitable places on board vessels respectably owned, and he never lost sight of his proteges.  A large map of the world, stuck over with pins, showed him at a glance where he had last heard from one of these rescued waifs.  “God bless the Kernel,” was chalked upon many a wall in Gravesend; and well might the poor bless the man who personified to them the life and daily walk of one who “had been with Jesus.”  To them he was the “Good Samaritan,” pouring in oil and wine; and they blessed and reverenced him, and gave him a love which he valued more than royal gifts.

We must, however, hasten on, and see him transferred from Gravesend to the Danube, and thence to the Soudan.  He succeeded Sir Samuel Baker in the government of these distant territories in Egypt in 1873.  The Khedive Ismail offered him L10,000 a year, but he would only accept L2,000, as he knew the money would have to be extorted from the wretched fellaheen.  His principal work was to conquer the insurgent slave-dealers who had taken possession of the country and enslaved the inhabitants.  The lands south of Khartoum had long been occupied by European traders, who dealt in ivory, and had thus “opened up the country.”  This opening up was a terrible scourge to the natives, because these European traffickers soon began to find out that “black ivory” was more valuable