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 _tÍte-‡-tÍte_ 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 confession of a vile conspiracy with the Peking doctors, and a signal for their massacre. They remained to live down the ominous and odious charge, and in continuous effort to justify the simplicity of their motives and the purity and beneficence of their mission. 'Deeply moved, as I was, by the story of this hairbreadth escape, I asked Mrs. Gilmour more about those fearful weeks of suspense, and she assured me that they had been perfectly calm, and that they were entirely resigned to God's will, whatever it might be.'