strong. I had a warm bath and slept like a top.'

Those who were privileged to entertain James Gilmour, if congenial, and
the old friends who were fortunate enough to secure him for even a brief
period, often experienced his power of vivid and entrancing narration.
His twelve years of service had been very full of varied and uncommon
experience, and when in the vein he could make the hours pass almost as
minutes. 'During this furlough,' writes Dr. Reynolds, 'I had several
opportunities of intercourse with him, and listened to several of his
addresses on the progress and need of missionary enterprise in the north
of China and Mongolia, and was profoundly impressed by his earnestness,
but I was more deeply moved when in quiet _tete-a-tete_ he unveiled some
of his special experiences. I should like to mention one. He once had
great hope of the conversion to God of a Mongol, who had given him his
entire confidence, and who was suffering from cataract in both eyes.
Gilmour felt that this was a case in which surgical help might restore
the sufferer to at least partial sight, and he made arrangements that in
the escort of a Mongol the patient should find his way to the medical
institution at Peking. He started on the pilgrimage when Gilmour, with
his brave young wife, were encamped in a great temporary settlement of
Mongols, who were in a state of considerable fanatical excitement
against the new faith and its foreign teacher. Gilmour said, "We prayed
night and day for the success of this experiment, and we arranged to
cover all expenses connected with the arrangement." Alas! wind laden
with dust, and blinding heat and other apparent accidents conspired
against the poor sufferer, and when the necessary time had elapsed after
the operation and the bandages were removed, the patient was found to
be _stone blind_. The Mongol companion stirred up the poor fellow's
suspicion by telling him that he knew why the Missionary had sent him to
Peking. "I saw," said he, "the jewel of your eye in a bottle on the
shelf. These Christians can get hundreds of taels for these jewels which
they take out of our eyes."

'When the blind man was brought back to Gilmour, his companion spread
his suspicions and exasperating story in the entire district, and the
fanatical hatred was augmented into seething and murderous passion, and
our dear friends were in imminent peril for several weeks. If they had
ventured to escape, it would have been a conf