Macartney proceeded to Father Hendricks' humble abode within the city walls not far from the ` Water Gate,' he discovered the poor sufferer relieved of all further pains by what seemed to have been a nervous stroke. Alone in his ramshackle house he had persistently rejected all offers of nursing and help. So there was no one to witness the end. It was a pathetic close to a life which was strangely obscure even to the old Abbé's best friends. Nothing definite was known at Kashgar of his original home and relations, except that he had been born in Holland and reached Turkestan after some years of work as member of a Catholic missionary congregation in Manchuria. After a consultation with Mr. Macartney as the deceased's oldest friend and protector, the Russian Consul-General charged himself with the arrangements for the burial, no easy task in Kashgar, where European convention asserts itself although the means for satisfying its prescripts in this mournful direction are of the scantiest.
Though the intense heat of the day would have counselled an early start, I postponed my departure for Yarkand on June 23rd until after the funeral. When, after busy hours since daybreak spent in starting the baggage and settling petty accounts of artisans and the like, I followed with Mr. Macartney what we took to be a summons to the funeral, we found M. Kolokoloff and some of his officers still sitting at the carpenter's shop where the coffin was being got ready. It was to have been finished the evening before ; but neither the incentives of life nor the call of death can disturb the ineradicable slackness of the Kashgar ` Ustad.' So there was nothing for the good-natured Consul but to assure the completion of the coffin by personal supervision of the labour. Weary hours passed over this. We soon found the air of the little shop stifling, and retired to the shelter of a neighbouring Sarai to talk in peace of the strange life now ended and—the tasks which the future had for me. Periodical visits to the shop showed us the gentlemen of the Russian colony partaking of a much-needed collation, and smoking by the side of the coffin now being completed with the help of some sturdy Cossacks. It was a picture
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