"Truly, yes! Though I do not for a moment suppose she knows anything whatever about it. I certainly never told her, and I never told you, because I had been a studious herd-laddie myself, and I knew what shy and hypersensitive colts they are, and the delicacy necessary to their proper handling." "I thank you for telling me now, sir. It is as I would have it." "I believe it would please her to know what you told me, sir," Blair broke out abruptly a little later on, and the old gentleman smiled at the evidence of the track of his thoughts. "I will write and tell her, if you like, if you really think the knowledge would afford her any gratification." "I think it would, sir." And so Jean Arnot received two notes which gave her very deep pleasure. And the shorter one of the two said simply:-- "You will have learned by this time, from my dear old friend and second father, what I myself only learned three days ago--that it was your unconscious hand that set my unconscious feet on the ladder. I rejoice to know that it was so. The knowledge of it would be an additional spur, if any spur were needed. Time may come, however, when the remembrance of your kindness and all it has done for me, unconscious though it was, may nerve me for some critical passage in the life in front, for we are going among perilous peoples. It is not likely we shall ever meet again, but, having learned how this matter stood, I could not leave home without tendering you my most grateful and hearty thanks. "That your life may be a wide, and bright, and beautiful, and happy one will be the prayer of "Yours faithfully, "KENNETH BLAIR." "He is a good man," said Jean thoughtfully, as she folded the letter and put it carefully into a special corner of her desk, and then immediately took it out again and re-read it. "May God go with him also!" She read in the papers next day of his sailing in company with John Gerson, the prophet of the Dark Islands, and was surprised to discover in herself a curious feeling of loss, as though something had gone out of her life. Which, considering all the circumstances of the case, was distinctly odd, you know. She had only met him twice in her life; for ten years she had hardly given him a thought; and yet his going left a little blank in a life which was quite unaccustomed to anything of the kind. But the sudden sight of him in all his quiet strength of attainment, and the knowledge of what it all meant to him, together with this new understanding of how it had all come about, and of the share she herself had unconsciously had in the making of him--well, perhaps after all it was not so odd. For she had felt a sudden glow of participation in his triumph, a sudden sense of increase such as no procurement of her wealth had ever brought her--and now it was as suddenly gone, and a blank remained. She caught herself thinking of him oftener than she had ever thought of any man before, and she said to herself in surprise--