More swiftly than ever before, he crossed the lonely desert. Many skeletons of men and of camels, of oxen and of horses, now lay bleaching in the scorching sun on that dreary waste of treeless desolation.

On 18th February he reached Khartoum, and was greeted as their deliverer by the people, who flocked around him in hundreds, trying to kiss his hands and feet.

"I come without soldiers," he said to them, "but with God on my side, to redress the evils of the land."

At once he was ready, as in past days, to listen to tales of wrong from the poorest, and to try to set them right. He had all the whips and instruments of torture that Egyptian rulers had used piled up outside the Palace and burned. In the gaol he found two hundred men, women, and children lying in chains and in the most dismal plight. Some were innocent, many were prisoners of war. Of many their gaolers could give no reason for their being there. One woman had been imprisoned for fifteen years for a crime committed when she was a child.

Gordon had their chains struck off, and set them free. At nightfall he had a bonfire made of the prison, and men, women, and children danced round it in the red light of the flames, laughing and clapping their hands.

All the sick in the city he sent by the river down to Egypt.

In Khartoum itself, by the mercy of its Governor, peace soon reigned.

"Gordon is working wonders," was the message Mr. Power sent to England.

But the Mandi's power was daily growing, and he feared no one. When Gordon sent him messages of peace he sent back insolent answers, calling upon Gordon to become a Mussulman, and to come and serve the Mandi.

"If Egypt is to be quiet, the Mandi must be smashed up," Gordon telegraphed to the English Government.

By means of his steamers he laid in stores. The defences of Khartoum he strengthened by mines and wire entanglements. He made some steamers bullet-proof, and on 24th August was able to write that they were doing "splendid work." His poor "sheep," as he called his troops, were being turned into tried soldiers. "You see," he wrote, "when you have steam on, the men can't run away, and must go into action."

Daily, from the top of a tower that he had built, he would gaze long with his glass down the river and into the country round. From there he could see if the Mandi's armies were approaching, or if help were coming to save Khartoum and the Soudan. All the time he kept up the hearts of the people, and encouraged work at the school and everywhere else.

In his journal he wrote: "I toss up in my mind, whether, if the place is to be taken, to blow up the Palace and all in it, or else to be taken, and, with God's help, to maintain the faith, and if necessary suffer for it (which is most probable). The blowing up of the Palace is the simplest, while the other means long and weary humiliation and suffering of all sorts. I think I shall elect for the last, not from fear of death, but because the former is, in a way, taking things out of God's hands."

"Haunting the Palace are a lot of splendid hawks. I often wonder whether they are destined to pick out my eyes."

Gradually the Mandi's forces were gathering round the city. Their drums rang in the ears of the besieged like the sound of a gathering storm. The outlying villages were besieged, and many of those villagers went over to the enemy. In some cases Gordon managed to drive back the rebels from the parts they attacked, and bring back arms and stores taken from them. More often the troops that were expected to defend Khartoum put Gordon to shame by their feebleness and cowardice, and suffered miserable defeat. Once, when attacking the Mandists, five of Gordon's own commanders deserted, and helped to drive their own soldiers back to Khartoum.

As the year wore on, the siege came closer. Daily the Palace and the Mission House were shelled, and men were killed as they walked in the streets.

Money was scarce, and Gordon had little bank-notes made and used in place of money, so that business still went on. But food grew scarcer than money. Biscuits were the officers' chief food; dhoora that of the men.

Again and again news was sent to him: "The English are coming."

Again and again he found that the English army that was to relieve Khartoum had not yet started.

"The English are coming!" mocked the dervishes.

Day by day, Gordon's glass would sweep the steely river and the yellow sand for the first sight of the men who were coming to save him and his people.

At last, with sinking heart, he wrote: "The Government having abandoned us, we can only trust in God."

"When our provisions, which we have, at a stretch, for two months, are eaten, we must fall," wrote, to the Times,&nbps; Frank Power, a brave man and a true friend of Gordon.

In April the telegraph wires were cut by the enemy. After that, news from England was only rarely to be had, and only through messengers who were not often to be trusted.

Still hoping that an English army was coming, Gordon determined to send his steamers half way to meet it. It meant that his garrison would be weaker, should the Mandi make any great attack, but Gordon felt that England could  not fail him, and that in a very short time the steamers would return, bringing a splendid reinforcement.

On September loth, three steamers, with Colonel Stewart and Frank Power in command, sailed down the Nile.

Gordon was left the only Englishman in Khartoum.

"I am left alone . . . but not alone," he wrote.

The steamer with Stewart and Power on board ran aground. The crew was treacherously taken by a native sheikh, and Stewart, Power, and almost all the others were cruelly murdered and their bodies thrown into the Nile.

The news of the death of his two friends, and the ruin of his plan to hasten on the relief of Khartoum, cut Gordon's brave heart to the quick.

Before Mr. Power left, Gordon had given him a little book that he loved. It is called The Dream of S. Gerontius. Gordon had marked many passages in it. Here are some:

So it seemed that even then Gordon knew that Death was drawing near him, and was greeting with a fearless face the martyrdom that he was soon to endure.

Yet all the while he never wavered, and his bravery seemed to give courage to the feeblest hearted.

He who had never taken any pride in decorations or in medals—save one—tried to cheer his soldiers by having a decoration made and distributed—"three classes: gold, silver, pewter."

A Circassian in the Egyptian Service, speaking of Gordon in after years, said: "He never seemed to sleep. He was always working and looking after the people."

In the early days of those dark months, Frank Power had written of him that all day he was cheering up others, but that through the night he heard his footfall overhead, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, sleepless, broken in heart, bearing on his soul the burden of those he had no power to save.

At dawn he slept. All day he went the rounds, cheering up the people, seeing to the comfort of every one, feeding the starving as well as he could. For two days at a time he would go without food, that his portion might go to others. They were living on roots and herbs when the siege was done.

All the night he spent on the top of his tower, watching and praying. Many times in the day did men see the spare figure standing on that yellow-white tower, staring, with eyes that grew tired with longing, into the far-away desert, looking for the help that never came.

But, after many delays, an English army was actually on the march.

It was a race of about 1800 miles up the Nile from the sea—a race between Victory and the Salvation of the beleaguered city and its defender on one side, and Defeat, Death, and the Mandi on the other.

Lord Wolseley, who commanded the expedition, offered £100 to the regiment that covered the distance first.

Some fierce battles were fought on the way, 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 Mandi 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 Mandists 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 Mandi 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 Mandi'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 Mandi was dead. He who boasted that he was immortal had died from poison given him by a woman whom he had cruelly used. The Mandi's successors had fallen before a conquering English army.

When the Mandists sacked and burned the Governor's Palace, they forgot to destroy the trees and the rose bushes that Gordon with his own hands had planted.

And in a new and lovely garden, beside a new Palace from which a brave Scottish soldier rules the Soudan, the roses grow still, fragrant and beautiful.

Khartoum is a great town now, peaceful and prosperous.

The Gordon College, where the boys of the Soudan are taught all that English schoolboys learn, is the monument that England gave to a hero. A statue of him stands in one of the squares, and to it came a poor old black woman to whom Gordon had been very kind.

"God be praised!" she cried, "Gordon Pasha has come again!"

For a whole day she sat beside the statue, longing for a look from him who had never before passed her without a friendly nod.

"Is he tired? or what is it?" she asked.

After many visits, she came home one evening quite happy.

"The Pasha has nodded his head to me!" she said.

And so, in the hearts of the people of the Soudan, Gordon Pasha still lives.

Winds carry across the desert the scent of the roses that he planted, and that drop their fragrant leaves near where his blood was shed.

And to the Eastern country for whose sake he died, and to our own land for whose honour his life was given, he has left a memory that must be like the roses—for ever fragrant, and for ever sweet.