So he never mentioned Jean, met the boy on his own ground as a perfectly new acquaintance, gradually won his confidence and his heart, guided, led, and finally enabled him by his own exertions to obtain a bursary and proceed to college. With that, nothing could keep him back. His heart was in it, his aims were high, and his course was a triumphal progress. He had learned, as a boy, that greatest of lessons--how to learn. The rough experiences of his boyhood on the hillside had given him splendid health and a body that never tired. He was tough as wire, and, among other things, was known at college for that passion for personal cleanliness which, in its earlier days, had helped to introduce him to Jean Arnot on the hillside. He had, quite early--as soon, indeed, as he perceived the possibility of attaining to it--fixed on the mission-field as offering what his soul yearned for. Perhaps at first it was the unknown that drew him. No matter. By degrees the known outrivalled the unknown, the greater absorbed the less, and his heart was fixed on the highest of all high work. In these ten years he had learned mightily. Head, heart, and hand had toiled incessantly, and never felt it toil, since it was only the natural satisfaction of a great heart-craving. Then he had come across Gerson, home on leave for the first time in twenty years. Their hearts and eyes struck sparks the first time they met. "That is a man!" said Gerson, "and I'll have him if I can get him." "That is a saint and a hero!" said Blair. "I'm his man if he'll have me." After that no power on earth could have kept them apart, and on Thursday they were to sail together for the outer fringes. Gerson was busily bidding his friends goodbye. "You may hear of me from time to time. You'll never see me again--this side the veil at all events. We'll hope to meet on the other side," he said heartily, and grudged every day that lay between him and his work. Blair, in telling Mr. and Mrs. MacTavish of his reception at the Greenock church, incidentally mentioned Miss Arnot, but doubted evidently whether they would know anything of her. But the old man laughed gently, and said, in his quiet, old-fashioned, precise way, which was the very antithesis of the Rev. Archibald's jovial utterances: "I will explain to you now, my dear boy, what at the time I deemed wisest to treasure within the repository of my own heart. It was from Miss Jean Arnot that I first heard about you. It was in consequence of her delighted account of her meeting with you, and the Euclid and the Latin grammar, that I sought you out on the hillside and tendered you the helping hand of which you have made such excellent use." "It was Miss Arnot?" said the young man in amazement.