subsequent change of mind, and desire to stay in Khartoum and be supported by force, it seems clear that he had deceived us and did not really mean evacuation. This, however, could not yet be seen from the words he used. I wrote to Lord Granville on January 22nd, to point out that in addition to the danger in the Soudan, which had been foreseen, there was a risk that Gordon might get himself carried off alive into the desert by some of the Arab chiefs that he was to meet, and that in that case we should have to send an expedition after him. 'On January 31st there was a meeting at the War Office about Egypt between Hartington, Lord Granville, Edmond Fitzmaurice and myself. As the facts about Gordon were beginning to be misrepresented in the Press, Lord Granville set them down in writing. [Footnote: See _Life of Gladstone_, vol. iii., pp. 152-155; Life of Granville, vol. ii., pp. 381-385 and 512, where a letter from Lord Cromer on General Gordon's instructions is printed; and chap. xvi. ('Gordon, and the Soudan') in _The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1900_, by Dr. J. Holland Rose.] It had been stated, and was afterwards repeated by Justin McCarthy in his history, that the mission on which we sent Gordon "was in direct opposition to his own ideas. He was not in favour of the abandonment of the Soudan or the evacuation of Khartoum." It had also been said that the whole mission had been forced upon us by the Press--i.e., by Stead, in the _Pall Mall Gazette_. Lord Granville gave me a memorandum saying that Gordon had acknowledged that the statements in the _Pall Mall_ were "not accurate." Lord Granville went on to say that he did not think that Gordon could be said to have "changed his mind. It appeared in his conversation with Wolseley on the Tuesday that he (Gordon) was not decided in his opinion, and that he was as likely to recommend one course as another.... I told him that we would not send him out to re-open the whole question, and he then declared himself ready to go out merely to help in the evacuation of the interior of the Soudan. He is not remarkably precise in conversation, though I found him much more so than Wolseley had led me to expect."