In the Colonel's big, old-fashioned garden, with its trim borders of boxwood, one would find on summer days the old and the halt sunning themselves. Many nice flowers and vegetables were grown in the garden, but they did not belong to him. He allowed some of his poor people to plant and sow there what vegetables they chose, and then to make money for themselves by selling them. Presents of fruit and flowers sent to him at once found their way to the hospital or to the workhouse. People saw that it was no use ever to give Gordon any presents, because they at once went to those who needed the things more than he did. To the poor he gave pensions of so much a week--from 1s. to L1. Some of these pensions were still kept up and paid to the day of his death, thirteen years later. He was always tender-hearted, always merciful, and he _always_ forgave. A soldier got tipsy, and stole five valuable patent locks. Gordon asked the manager of the works from which they had been taken what he meant to do. "The carpenters were to blame for leaving the locks about, so I am going to let the soldier off," said the manager. "Thank you, thank you," said Gordon, as eagerly as if he himself had been the thief. "That is what I should have done myself." One day a woman called on him and told him a piteous story. He left the room to get her half-a-sovereign, and while he was gone she stole his overcoat, and hid it under her skirt. When he came back with the money, she thanked him again and again, and went away. As she walked along the street, the overcoat--a brown one--slipped down. A policeman noticed it, and asked her what it meant. The woman, too frightened to tell a lie, said she had stolen it from "the Kernel." Back to Gordon's house the policeman marched her. The coat was shown to Gordon, and the policeman asked him to charge the woman with the theft, and have her put in prison. But this Gordon refused to do. He was really far more distressed than was the thief herself. At last, his eyes twinkling, he turned to the woman. "You wanted it, I suppose?" he asked. "Yes," said the surprised woman. "There, there, take her away and send her about her business," he said to the policeman, and the policeman could only obey. The gold medal which the Empress of China had had made for him mysteriously disappeared, no one could tell how or where. Years afterwards, by accident, it was found that Gordon had had the inscription taken off it, and had sent it anonymously to Manchester, to help to buy food for the people who were starving there because of the Cotton Famine. It cost him so much to give it up that often, when he meant that others should give up something that was to cost them a very great deal, he would say, "You must give up your medal." "In slums, hospitals, and workhouse, or knee-deep in the river at work upon the Thames defence," so he spent the six happiest years of his life.