Produced by Al Haines

[Illustration: Cover art]

[Frontispiece: THEY WENT ON STEP BY STEP, WITH EYES FOR EVERY ROCK AND
BUSH (missing from book)]

WHITE FIRE

BY JOHN OXENHAM

WITH SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS

BY G. GRENVILLE MANTON

  _Adversity doth make men strong,
  Yet stronger still I count the man
  Who can sustain prosperity unspoiled
  And turn it to high uses._

  _The white fire of a great enthusiasm
      is the mightiest force in the world._

TORONTO

THE COPP CLARK COMPANY, LIMITED

1905

WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  GOD'S PRISONER
  RISING FORTUNES
  A PRINCESS OF VASCOVY
  OUR LADY OF DELIVERANCE
  JOHN OF GERISAU
  UNDER THE IRON FLAIL
  BONDMAN FREE
  THE VERY SHORT MEMORY OF MR. JOSEPH SCORER
  BARBE OF GRAND BAYOU
  A WEAVER OF WEBS
  HEARTS IN EXILE
  THE GATE OF THE DESERT

TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF

James Chalmers

  GREAT HEART OF NEW GUINEA--
  "GREAT HEART THE TEACHER,
  GREAT HEART THE JOYOUS,
  GREAT HEART THE FEARLESS,
  GREAT HEART OF SWEET WHITE FIRE,
  GREAT HEART THE MARTYR....
  _Nor dead, nor sleeping!  He lives on, his name
  Shall kindle many a heart to equal flame.
  A soul so fiery sweet can never die,
  But lives, and loves, and works through
  all eternity._"

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

MISS INQUISITIVE

CHAPTER II

THE MAN

THE MAN'S MAN

CHAPTER IV

A SHAMELESS THING!

CHAPTER V

LEAP YEAR

CHAPTER VI

A SUDDEN WIDE HORIZON

CHAPTER VII

SOME ODD FURNISHINGS AND A HONEYMOON

CHAPTER VIII

GOING STRONG

CHAPTER IX

ARMS AND THE MAN

CHAPTER X

A BLACK OBJECT-LESSON

CHAPTER XI

TOO LATE

CHAPTER XII

THE FLAMING SWORD

CHAPTER XIII

THE MAN'S MAN'S MAN

CHAPTER XIV

CLIPPING A BLACKBIRD

CHAPTER XV

WHERE THOU GOEST

CHAPTER XVI

SAWDUST AND SHAVINGS

CHAPTER XVII

FIRST FRUITS

CHAPTER XVIII

SETBACKS

CHAPTER XIX

FORWARD

CHAPTER XX

MANY FORMS OF GRACE

CHAPTER XXI

MIGHT OF RIGHT

CHAPTER XXII

PAX

CHAPTER XXIII

THE SCOURGE OF GOD

CHAPTER XXIV

GAIN OF LOSS

CHAPTER XXV

THE LIFTING VEIL

CHAPTER XXVI

THE GENTLE MARTYR

CHAPTER XXVII

PEACE WITH A SPEAR

CHAPTER XXVIII

NO THOROUGHFARE

CHAPTER XXIX

THE ACT OF GOD

CHAPTER XXX

WIPED OUT

CHAPTER XXXI

REVERSIONS

CHAPTER XXXII

FROM THE BEGINNING

CHAPTER XXXIII

SALT OF THE EARTH

ILLUSTRATIONS

THEY WENT ON STEP BY STEP, WITH EYES FOR EVERY
  ROCK AND BUSH (missing from book) . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_

WAVED HIS HAND TO HER, AND RECEIVED AN ANSWERING WAVE

ONE SIGN OF FLINCHING AND IT IS FINISHED

"MY LIFE IS FORFEIT TO THE PAST"

"AND HE HAS REALLY HAD THE AUDACITY TO ASK YOU TO MARRY HIM"

SHE HAD LONG AND PEREMPTORY INTERVIEWS WITH HER LAWYER

BLAIR CALLED FOR THE MATE AND TOLD HIM CURTLY
  WHAT HE HAD ALREADY TOLD THE CAPTAIN

"WE SHALL SEE THEM AGAIN," SAID CAPTAIN CATHIE (missing from book)

IT MIGHT BE FOR THE LAST TIME

STEPS ON THE ROAD TO SALVATION

"HELLO!  WHAT'S THIS?"

"QUITE HAPPY, JEAN?" ASKED BLAIR

PEACE WITH A SPEAR

"_MISSIONARIES_!  WELL I AM ----!"

BLAIR SPRANG UPRIGHT INSTINCTIVELY

WAVED HER FAREWELLS FROM THE SHORE

CHAPTER I

MISS INQUISITIVE

She was so dainty a little figure that the bare-armed women in the
doors of the lands and closes turned and looked after her with
enjoyment untinged even with envy.  They scratched their elbows and
commented on her points with complacent understanding.

"None o' your ten-and-six carriage paid in that lot, I'm thinking, Mrs.
O'Neill," said one.

"Thrue for ye, Mrs. Macfarlane.  Purty as a daisy, she is.  It's me
that wud like to be on tairms with her maw when she's done with 'em."

And a decidedly pretty little figure the small girl made, in her
stylishly pleated blue serge, jaunty tam, natty leather belt, and
twinkling brown shoes, and her absolute unconsciousness of anything
unduly attractive in her appearance.

Her determined little face was set strenuously.  She looked neither to
the right hand nor to the left, beyond a glance now and again for
landmarks.  And above all, and most inflexibly, she never once looked
behind her; for she was bound upon an adventure, and her reward lay on
ahead.

"Past the cemetery gates," she said to herself.  "Up a brae.  Past a
pond and up a cinder path.  That's all right!  That must be the woollen
mill, and that's the paper-mill, and that splashing white must be the
Cut."

As she took the cinder path, the gates of the two mills opened, and a
flood of hurrying girls came down towards the town, mostly in bunches,
laughing and joking, some with linked arms, some few solitary.  Then
followed boys and men, with dinner in their faces, and an occasional
word fired at the girls in front.

The girls all fell silent, and resolved themselves into devouring eyes,
as the dainty little figure stepped briskly past them.  There were
spasms of longing among them; they buried them under bursts of wilder
laughter.  The men and boys glanced at her out of the corners of their
eyes, and did not understand why the sky looked bluer and the sunshine
brighter than it had done a moment before.

She came, presently, to a dividing of the ways, where the roads
branched to the two mills, made a short reconnaissance of the flashing
chute she had seen from below, then turned to the right, past the
paper-mill and the manager's house, past the clump of fir-trees, and
came out on a footpath by the side of which the rushing brown waters of
the Cut hurried down to the mills and reservoirs.

"O-o-o-oh!" said the small girl rapturously, and her face was an
unconscious Te Deum.

And well it might be, for she had a great appreciation of the
beautiful, and she was enjoying her first full glimpse of one of the
finest sights in the whole of Great Britain and Ireland and the
adjacent Cumbraes.

"O-o-oh!" and she sat down to enjoy it.

Below her to the right rose the smoke of the town and the ceaseless
clangour of the ship-building yards.  A movement would have hidden them
from her.  But she did not move; she neither saw nor heard them.  Her
eyes were fixed absorbedly on the mighty panorama beyond: the lovely
firth, blue as an Italian lake, and all alive with traffic; energetic
little river steamers racing with rival toys; slow coasters toiling
along like water-beetles; a great black American liner at the Tail of
the Bank; the great grey guardship with its trim official lines and
hovering launches; and farther out, near the opposite shore, the white
sails of yachts flashing in the sun like seabirds' wings.  And
beyond--the hills, the mighty hills of God.  She had known the hills in
a general, wholesale way for long enough; but she knew now that she had
never known them before.  From this lofty vantage point she saw them
now for the first time in all their grandeur and beauty, and they
overwhelmed her.

Such a mighty array of giants: green, rounded hills; rugged brown
hills, flushed with the purple of the heather; grey mountain peaks
piled fantastically against the unflecked blue sky; bosky glens; dark
patches of forest land; and all about them, down below, the silent
strength of the sea, lapping the feet of the recumbent giants, creeping
up among their sprawling limbs, and cradling the mighty bulks with
tender caresses!

The girl sat for a long time drinking it all in, to the tune of the
swirl and bubble and tinkle of the swift brown water behind her.  Then
she got up and went on along the path, which disclosed fresh beauties
of the larger view at every step.  She went on and on, heedless of
everything but the wide, vast prospect and her own mighty enjoyment of
it.  She had some lunch in her pocket; she forgot it.  The air was so
sweet and strong that she felt no fatigue.  She had walked for over an
hour in this new heaven of delight, when she came tumbling to earth in
truly feminine fashion.

The path followed the Cut round the folds and wrinkles of the hillside.
At times, on in front, it disappeared into the sky.  She was nearing
one such sharp turn, when a pair of mighty horns came wavering round
it, and behind the horns an evil monster all in black and with baleful
eyes.  At sight of her it gave an angry bellow and pawed the ground.
Alongside her was a small stone erection like an unfinished hut, on a
little platform, below which white water trickled down a glen full of
ferns and trees.  She clasped her hands, gave herself up for lost, and
dropped out of the monster's sight behind the one end wall of the hut.

Then a boy's voice rang out full and clear--

"Ah, beast!  Bos ferocissime!  Get out o' that, or I'll do for you.
What's taken you to-day, you old villain?"

Then followed more forcible argument in the shape of stones, and, with
grateful twitches of her clasped hands, the small girl saw her
discomfited enemy go crashing down the hillside among the whins and
ferns and rolling rocks.

The beast was evidently possessed of an unusually perverse disposition
that day.  It looked up once at the girl behind the wall, and made some
spiteful remark, which elicited a dissuasive "Would you?" and another
shower of stones from its keeper.  Then it went galloping away on the
sides of its feet along the steep hillside.  The boy, with an
exclamation, sprang down after it, and the girl caught sight of him for
the first time--a sturdy little figure, with light hair and unlimited
energy.  He chased the beast with boyish objurgations, which broke out
with new vigour when the chase led through a piece of black swamp, with
the natural results to the pursuer.

He came back presently, hot and muddy, whistling like a blackbird.

She was just about to get up and go on, when she heard him jumping down
into the little glen below, and she craned over to see what he was
about.

He scrambled down to a small round natural basin in the rock, threw off
his jacket and waistcoat, unbuttoned his flannel shirt, and proceeded
to a mighty wash.

He seemed to revel in it so exceedingly that the girl sat and watched
him with enjoyment.  He had no towel, so did not waste any time in
drying himself, but allowed the sun and wind to do their duties.  Then
he came clambering up the slope again.  There was a large flat stone in
front of the embryo cabin.  He came and sat down on it, and remained
there so long and so quiet that at last she moved slightly and peeped
round to see what he was doing.

And what he was doing was so very astonishing that she gave an
involuntary gasp of amazement.

He was lying flat on his stomach, with a tattered book open in front of
him.  On the flat slab was a diagram drawn with the chunk of chalk he
held in his hand, and he was studying it so intently that he did not
hear her till her shadow fell across his work.

"Hello!  Where did _you_ come from?" and he jumped up and stood staring
at her.  He was not aware of it, but he was dimly perceptive of the
fact that she was very nice-looking.  He remembered later--when her
face evaded him--that she was very prettily dressed.

"From behind there," she said.  "That nasty bull frightened me."

"He's a stupid beast."  And then, suddenly bethinking himself, "Have
you been there ever since?"

The girl nodded.  She liked the look of him.  His jacket and trousers
were rough and well worn, but his face was wonderfully bright and
clean.  She did not know when she had seen a boy's face she liked so
much.  There was such a glow in it, and his blue eyes were so fearless
and looked at her so very straight.  She did not know very many boys,
and did not care much for any of those she did know.  They were always
either teasing or silly, and always abominably selfish.  Somehow this
boy did not seem any of those things.

"You'd no right to watch a gentleman washing himself."

"You're not a gentleman, and I couldn't help myself.  At least----"

"You're not a lady, and you could have gone away quite well.  It's a
good thing for you I didn't have a bath in the big pool there.  You'd
have watched just the same, I suppose, Miss Inquisitive!"

"Oh!" she said sharply.  "You rude thing!  How did you know?"

"Know what?"

"That!  Miss---- what you called me just now."

At which he laughed out loud, a great merry laugh that did one good to
listen to, and showed a set of sound white teeth and a quick
apprehension.

"Is that what they call you at home?" he asked, with a mischievous
twinkle.

"My aunties call me that.  Father says 'Want-to-know gets on.'"

"He's right," said the boy, with a blaze in the blue eyes.  "I like
your father better than your aunties.  Where were you going when the
beast stopped you?"

"Right along there," she nodded.

"All the way to the Sheils?  It's a gey long way for a bit lassie like
you."

"I'm not a bit lassie.  I'm thirteen."

"Really!  You're young for your age!"

She was somewhat doubtful about this remark, but it felt like a
compliment, so she let it pass.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Kenneth Blair.  What's yours?"

"Jean Arnot.  How old are you?"

"I'll be fifteen next July."  This was August.

"What's that you were drawing?  Is it a windmill?" staring intently
down at it.

"A windmill!"--with unutterable scorn.  "And you say you're thirteen!
That's Euclid--Prop. 47.  It's a thumper too."

"I haven't begun Euclid yet," she said meekly, and regarded him with a
face full enough of questioning to amply justify her nickname.  "Will
you please tell me something?"

He began to laugh, and she knew that "Miss Inquisitive" was on the tip
of his tongue.  He only nodded, however.

"Do all the herd-boys about here do Euclid?"

"I d'n' know.  There's nothing to stop them if they want to."

"Why do you speak so differently from most other boys?  You speak
almost as well as I do."

A smile flickered in his face for a second, but died out, and he said
quietly--

"That's easily told, anyway.  My father was schoolmaster at
Inverclaver.  He taught me."

"And does he teach you still?  Where is he schoolmaster now?"

He looked at her a moment in silence, and then said--

"I don't know.  He's dead."

"Oh!  But he can't be a schoolmaster anywhere if he's dead.  I'm so
sorry.  And of course he can't teach you either."

"I don't know," said the boy slowly.  "I think sometimes----"

But she was off on another scent.

"What are you going to be when you grow up?"

"Ah!"--with animation.  "I'm going to be a big man."

"You can't make yourself that.  You're not very big now."

"I've not done growing yet, and I'm very strong, and I've never been
ill in my life.  Besides----"

"I've just had measles and whooping-cough.  That's why I'm here."

He nodded, as much as to say, "Yes, that's just the kind of thing girls
would have"; and went on, "And then I'm going to be an explorer."

"O-o-o-h!" with snapping eyes.  "Where?"

"I don't know where.  Anywhere where nobody's ever been before."

She devoured him with hungry appreciation.  His face was so very clean,
so radiantly bright, and the sparks in his blue eyes kindled answering
sparks in her own.  For she too possessed a lively imagination, and a
spirit many times the size of her body.

"But will you be able to?  Are you very rich?"

"Rich?  No, I'm not rich, but I'm not that poor either--not just now.
I bought this last week," with a touch of superior pride, as he hauled
out a Latin grammar, sixth-hand, but still boasting covers.  "When I've
finished it I'll feel poor till I get the next.  But that's not yet."

"Wouldn't you like to be very rich?"

"I d'n' know.  I never tried it."

"My father is very rich."

"Is he?  And what are you going to do when you grow up?"

"Oh, I'm going to be a lady."

"Yes, that's about all you can be, I suppose," he nodded, and looked
really sorry for her.

"I shall be very rich, and I shall do just what I like--except darning
and needlework.  They're hijjus!"

"Hideous," he said, with a touch of pedantic reproof which consorted
oddly with his jacket and trousers.

"I always say 'hijjus' when it's quite too awful and past words.  How
would you like to be a manager of one of my father's mills?"

"I don't know," he said, regarding her doubtfully.  "I'm thinking
perhaps I wouldn't make a very good manager.  Not yet."

Then her hand happened to touch her pocket, which reminded her of her
lunch.

"Are you hungry?" she asked.  "I'll sit down here and you shall have
some of my lunch, and you shall tell me the names of all those hills
and lochs opposite.  Aren't they splendid?"

"Ay, they're grand.  I've been watching them for a year now."

She wrestled her dainty little packet out of her pocket, and sat down
on a rock looking out over the wonderful panorama in front.  The boy
sat down on another rock and hauled out a piece of newspaper in which
were wrapped some broken pieces of thick oatcake and some rough
fragments of cheese.

"Do you like oatcake and cheese?" she asked.

"Rather!"

"Won't you have some of my sandwiches?" she said politely, but not
without anxiety.

He looked at the delicate provision, and said stoutly--

"No, thank you.  I like this best."

And, as the little lady possessed the dainty but vigorous appetite of
the fully-restored-to-health-and-got-to-make-up-for-lost-time, and as
she was only thirteen, she was not rude enough to press him unduly.

"Now tell me the names of all those hills and lochs," she said, and he
proceeded to tell her all she wanted to know.

"Yon's Dumbarton,"--between bites; "you can see Glasgow some days," and
she regarded him doubtfully.

"And yon's the Gare Loch.  That big fellow with the shoulders is Ben
Lomond.  The one humped up like this is The Cobbler.  That other big
one is Ben Ihme.  That's Loch Long and a bit of Loch Goil, and yon's
Holy Loch and Ben More."

When she had eaten her tiny sandwiches, and her two small cookies with
jam inside, and her two biscuits, and had learned the names and
personal peculiarities of all the hills and lochs, and he had finished
the last crumbs of his oatcake and cheese, he convoyed her past the
black menace down below, as far as the next stone dyke, and told her
how she could shorten her journey by cutting across some fields, and so
get down to the Inverkip road, and eventually to Ashton and the "caurs."

He watched the sprightly little figure, with the gleaming mane of hair
and swinging skirts and twinkling brown shoes, till she reached the
next distant corner, waved his hand to her, received an answering wave
from her, and turned back to his life--his unruly beasts, his treasured
Euclid and Latin grammar, his dreams, his hopes, and ever so much more
than he knew.

[Illustration: Waved his hand to her, and received an answering wave.]

But Prop. 47 was not amenable that afternoon.  He smiled at thought of
the windmill, and looked up to see her standing before him with her
sweet childish face and questioning eyes.  He thought much of the
winsome little lady, both then and for a long time afterwards.  He
scanned the winding path by the Cut each day in hopes that she might
come again.  But she was away home to London, and at last only a memory
of her remained, and that growing dimmer and dimmer till it was little
more than a sentiment--simply the warm glow of a pleasant impression.

And she?  Ah, she wrought better than she knew that day.

For when she got home from her great adventure, and had been duly
scolded by her aunts for undertaking so much, when they had only
expected her to go up to the Cut and down again in a couple of hours or
so--when she reached home, old Mr. MacTavish, the minister, was there,
and he rejoiced in her prattling tongue, and delighted in drawing her
out.

She enlarged upon the very uncommon herd-laddie she had met up on the
Cut,--on his satisfactory looks, his unique cleanliness, his
fearlessness in the matter of wild beasts, his understanding, and his
aims in life.  Her thoughts were full of him, and when Miss Jean Arnot
had something on her mind her little world was by way of hearing of it.

Old Mr. MacTavish had been a herd-laddie himself in his time.

_Suffecit!_

CHAPTER II

THE MAN

Ten years later Miss Jean Arnot was visiting her aunts in Greenock
again.  Not but what she had been there many times in between, but this
is the only occasion of which we need take note.

There had been many changes in these ten years.

For one thing, Jean's father was dead, and she was a very wealthy young
woman.  In many respects she was still very like the little Jean of
earlier times.  Her face was still the sweet, long oval of her
childhood, though the features were more pronounced and matured.  But
the chief impression it left upon you was still that of eager
questioning, a great longing to know, tempered somewhat by years and
freedom from all material care.  "Want-to-know" was getting on in
years--twenty-three, a great age--but there were still mysteries of
life which she had not solved, wherein she found matter for surprise at
times.

But life ran very smoothly and pleasantly with her.  She went out a
little, and entertained a little in return, travelled much, and was not
wanting in good deeds and charity.  Her income was about ten times as
large as was really good for her, and if she gave munificently she
never missed what she gave, so that the recipients were the sole
beneficiaries of her giving.

She had hosts of friends, phalanxes of admirers; could have had hosts
of aspirants to a still closer relationship, but so far would have none
of them.  She was enjoying herself exceedingly, and fulfilling in their
entirety the aspirations of her childhood.  She was a lady, she was
rich, and she was doing as she liked--and she had not touched a needle
since she came into her kingdom.

That was the natural rebound, for Aunt Jannet Harvey, a famous
needlewoman and housewife herself, had rigorously insisted--so long as
she was in power--on her niece learning the minor as well as the major
accomplishments of a gentlewoman, such as had obtained during her own
long apprenticeship to that high estate.  And that is how it came to
pass that Miss Jean Arnot, wealthy heiress and society lady, really
knew a very great deal more about some things than you would have
imagined from the casual sight of her at dance or opera.

The moment she was free, and a woman of herself, she relegated the
"hijjus" things to what she considered their proper place in the
economy of her life, and, later, dug them up out of their dusty corners
gratefully, and Aunt Jannet was justified.

Aunt Harvey--Aunt Jannet Harvey, to distinguish her from Aunt Lisbeth
Harvey--had lived with them and mothered her since her own mother died,
when she was a very small child indeed.  Aunt Jannet was really her
mother's aunt, early widowed and childless, a wise and placid old
lady--old, that is, in the eyes of effervescent three-and-twenty--with
somewhat rigid ideas of right and wrong, toning slowly, by course of
time and easy circumstance, into a tolerant acceptance of things as
they came.  Her husband had been a professor in Edinburgh, and the
society he and she had enjoyed in the modern Athens, thirty years
before, was her standard of what society ought to be.  She was,
however, each year becoming more reconciled to the disparities of the
lighter age with which John Arnot's great success in life had forced
her into contact.  And Jean had been to her as her own daughter would
have been, if she had had one, since the day she first took charge of
her and began to endeavour to answer some of her questions, and quietly
to shelve others for more suitable occasion of discussion.  For little
Jean Want-to-know had a most active brain and an insatiable curiosity,
and never hesitated to ask for fullest details of anything she did not
understand; and the wonderings and questionings of such a child have no
bounds at times, and are almost impossible of control, either from the
inside or the outside.

Jean made a point of spending a part of each year in Scotland, wherever
else she and Aunt Jannet might wander at other times.  On such
occasions Aunt Jannet went to Edinburgh and lived again in the past,
but in a yearly narrowing circle, so far as the personal element was
concerned, and Jean went to Greenock and queened it over her aunts
there.

She was a great enjoyment, a continuous ripple of excitement, to their
ordered household; and since they no longer sat upon her and answered
her erstwhile inconvenient questions by gentle snubs and nicknames, the
times she spent with them were times of great enjoyment to her also.

She rather patronised them, of course, which was perhaps inevitable;
for she lived twenty to their one, and, moreover, possessed the means
to do it and a will that carried all before it.

She insisted, for instance, on paying for her board and lodging, and on
a tariff of her own fixing, whenever she came to stay with them, and
flatly declined to come on any other condition.  They were
independent-minded, and declined to be dictated to in such a matter by
a small thing whom they had known in frocks with skirts only thirteen
inches long.  She promptly scandalised them by going to the Tontine and
putting up there.  Then they gave way, and she had them.  After that
she was capable of anything, and they submitted to all her whims, which
were always pretty and thoughtful ones, and--she assured them, just as
they had been wont to assure her in the days of the thirteen-inch
frocks--entirely for their own good and happiness.  She salved the
cicatrice of the Tontine wound by carrying them all off _en masse_ to
the Riviera for a month; and Aunt Jean, after whom she was named,
gravely suggested the advisability of frequently opposing her ideas,
since the outcome was so eminently agreeable.

Then she was always making them presents, at which their independency
kicked, but in which, nevertheless, they could not but own to enjoyment.

But the girl was right, after all.  She had much too much, and they had
only enough, and that only with clever handling; and they would no more
have accepted bald gifts of money than they would have burned down
their house and claimed double the value of the furniture.

Jean and her visits, and their visits to her, and with her to hitherto
unattainable places, were the high lights of their lives.  They loved
her dearly, rejoiced in her greatly, were proud of her, and wondered
much when it would all come to an end in the centering of her thoughts
and affections on one sole and--they fervently hoped, but were not
without misgivings, because of her wealth and her impulsiveness--worthy
man.

They made ingenuous little attempts at sounding her on that subject,
but she was much too clever for them, and skilfully eluded all
approaches which might tend, even remotely, to any self-revelations.
That there were no revelations to make only added piquancy to the game,
from her point of view, since it kept the aunts in a state of perpetual
mystification, and held no pitfalls.

Among many other changes she had seen in the last ten years, old Mr.
MacTavish had retired long ago, and a younger man occupied his pulpit,
and, strange to say, gave satisfaction in it.

The Rev. Archibald Fastnet was so exactly the opposite of his
predecessor that it might have seemed impossible that where the one had
pleased the other should do so.  Mr. Fastnet was young, and he believed
in--as he put it--making things jump.  And he made both things and
people jump at times.  He was full of enthusiasms which were generally
at white heat and--which is more unusual--remained so.  The older
generation said he kept them on the perpetual "kee-vee" to see what he
would do next; the younger people enjoyed him and the service he
exacted from them.  And on Sundays they all, old and young, always
turned out both morning and evening, since it invariably came to pass
that, if they missed a service, something happened which made them feel
out of the running for the whole of the following week.  When Jean
Arnot was at Greenock she did as good Greenockians do, and went to
church twice every Sunday and one evening in the week as well.

The Rev. Archibald never failed to furnish her with a certain amount of
quiet amusement, and, apart from other feelings, she always went in
expectation and was rarely disappointed.

On this particular Sunday morning Mr. Fastnet had prepared a little
surprise for his people, which turned out, as his arrangements
generally did, a perfect success.  It also afforded Jean Arnot the
surprise of her life, and she never forgot it.

You can forget many things in ten full years.  If, for instance, you
yourself had met a person informally ten years ago, and spent half an
hour with him, just incidentally hearing his name, it is doubtful if
you would recall him very distinctly if he presented himself suddenly
before you after the ten years had passed.

Jean felt a rustle of surprise among her aunts in the pew, and she saw
that two men passed up into the pulpit where the Rev. Archibald lorded
it alone as a rule.  The voluntary ceased, and he stood up, beaming all
over, as usual when he had something unusually delectable up his sleeve
for them.

"Instead of speaking to you myself this morning," he said, "I have
asked our friend Mr. Blair to say a few words to us.  We all take a
fatherly and motherly, and I may say a sisterly and brotherly, interest
in Mr. Blair.  Perhaps some of us regret that none of us has taken a
still nearer and dearer-than-all-otherly interest in him"--at which
Fastneticism a smile rippled round.  "Our young friend leaves this week
to begin his work in the South Seas, where, as you know, he is about to
join that valiant bearer of light into outer darkness, John Gerson, in
his noble work.  You will, I know, appreciate with me this chance--it
may be the last chance--of hearing our young standard-bearer's voice
before he passes beyond the fringes of the night."

Then he came down, and took his seat in a front pew and enjoyed a
preacher's holiday.

And, after a pause, and very quietly, young Blair rose in the pulpit
and gave out the hymn.

So far Jean Arnot had been only interested and amused.  But the sound
of his voice, clear and round and full as an organ tone, made her jump
with surprise.  He had spoken quite naturally, but there was a ring in
it that told of immense possibilities behind, and there was something
in it that plucked at some hidden chord of Jean's memory and set it
humming as a harp-string responds to a bugle note.

She stared at him eagerly.  Had she ever by any possibility met him
before?  She could hardly have forgotten it if she had, she thought.
For he was a young man of most striking appearance.  Tall,
square-shouldered and broad-chested--a commanding figure in truth.  It
occurred to others besides Jean that if the natives needed more
forcible arguments than words for their conversion, here was a likely
man for the work.  Light-haired and clean-shaven, his face seemed to
glow with an inner radiance--a masterful face, and grave.  His eyes
were wonderfully magnetic; fearless and steadfast, they made you jump
as their glance crossed your own.  Jean had just jumped, so she knew.

Now who was this?  Surely she had met him before somewhere.

Remember it was ten years since she had seen him, and then only for
half an hour, and under very different conditions, and she had never
heard his name since.

She ordered her brain, or her heart, or whichever of her inner servants
it was that held the key, to go find it, and sat gazing at him to give
them such light as that might afford.  But the clue evaded her till he
was near the end of his quiet, forceful talk.

He had told them of his hopes, and the plans he and Gerson hoped to
carry out--"The grandest man I have ever met, a most noble Christian
gentleman," he said, in a burst of enthusiasm.  He asked them for their
help, their prayers, their sympathetic remembrance, their money--since
the work had to be maintained from the outside, and even missionaries
must live.

He spoke very simply, with no ornate periods or calculated sentences;
but his voice was like a trumpet, and his eyes were like stars, and his
words were illuminating and full of power, and now and again were flung
out white hot from the glowing heart within.  Though he spoke for the
most part so restrainedly, now and again the brake would slip, and the
sweet, white fire of a great, enthusiastic soul would flame through.

Perhaps he was a trifle over-confident of success--that is one of
youth's glories and pitfalls; but there was no doubt that his whole
heart was in his work--that here, for once at all events, a square man
had found his own square hole.

"It was always the great hope and desire of my boyhood to go out into
these unknown lands," he was saying.  "Though perhaps at that time the
inducement was chiefly the unknown, and the inhabitants, I fear,
appealed to me more as possible hindrances than inducements.  When I
tended my uncle's cattle on the hillsides of the Cut----"

And then she knew him, and she sat up with a jerk, and stared at him as
though she had only that moment awakened to the fact that he was
speaking.

And such, to some extent, was the fact.  She had been interested and
puzzled.  Now, in a moment, it was a new man she was looking at and
listening to--a new man, but an old friend.  And she was sitting on one
piece of rock eating cookies, and he was sitting on another munching
oatcake and cheese, and he was saying, "I'm going to be an explorer."

It was very wonderful--though she remembered that she had recognised
him, even then, as a boy of different texture from most other boys.
And so he had got what he wanted--the greatest prize a man may win, she
supposed: to desire vehemently a certain lofty course in life, and to
attain to it.

And she?  Yes, she remembered.  She was going to be rich, and a lady,
and do as she liked.  Truly hers was but a poor attainment compared
with his.

She did not hear much more of what he said, though she was gazing
fixedly at him all the time.  Her mind was away back to the hillside by
the Cut, and it was only when they stood up to sing the last hymn that
mind and body came together again.

Mr. Blair came down to shake hands with his many friends, and most of
the people went forward for that purpose, Jean's aunts among them, and
she with them; and as they sat at the back they were among the last to
reach him.

She was shaking hands with him, and the straight blue eyes looking into
her own set her heart jumping.

"Ah!" said the Rev. Archibald, all one vast beam of satisfaction at the
general enjoyment of his little surprise.  "Now we have you, Blair.
This lady, at all events, you can't claim as an old friend, though I am
quite sure she is a well-wisher."

Blair still held her hand and looked steadfastly into her eyes.

"This is----" began Mr. Fastnet, and was stopped abruptly by a
peremptory gesture of Miss Arnot's other hand.

"Yes--I think so," said the young man, breaking suddenly into a smile
of enjoyable reminiscence, "Miss--Jean--Arnot?  Or possibly now
Mrs.----?"

"Jean Arnot is still good enough for me, Mr. Blair," she said brightly.
"How wonderful that you should remember me all these years!"

"Why more wonderful than that you should have recognised me, Miss
Arnot?  We are both a good deal changed since last we met."

"Why, what's all this?" said the Rev. Archibald jovially.  "I had no
idea you knew Miss Arnot, Blair."

"We met once, ten years ago, up on the Cut--and had lunch together,"
said Blair, with a smile.  "I was keeping Highland cattle from goring
little girls, and Miss Arnot was exploring.  We have both travelled far
since then."

"You much the farthest," she said quietly, "and going still farther.  I
congratulate you very heartily.  It is what you desired then.  Do you
remember telling me?"

"Yes.  I am very grateful."

Blair's thoughts were full of her.  As they went home he quietly led
Fastnet on to speak about her, and offered him the best inducement to
plentiful speech in the appreciation with which he listened.

Fastnet enlarged upon her great wealth and generosity, her cleverness
and culture, her independence of thought and deed, and incidentally
mentioned that he had seen or heard some rumour of her possible
marriage with Lord Charles Castlemaine, second son of the Duke of
Munster, but he could not say what truth there was in it.

As a matter of fact, Jean Arnot would as soon have thought of marrying
the ticket-collector at Monument Station as Lord Charles Castlemaine.
The gentleman with the snips at Monument Station is doubtless a most
worthy individual, but I know absolutely nothing whatever about him.
Jean Arnot knew exactly as much, and one does not, as a rule, marry a
man one knows absolutely nothing about, nor--a man about whom one knows
considerably more than is to his credit.  Jean Arnot knew a good deal
about Charles Castlemaine, and there was not the slightest danger of
her marrying him.

"Is he a good sort?" asked Blair.

"Much what dukes' younger sons mostly are, I imagine.  The elder
brother is not strong, so if it comes off you may perhaps count among
your well-wishers a duchess sooner or later."

"Miss Arnot's good wishes would weigh more with me than those of all
the duchesses in the land," said Blair quietly.  "There is something
very taking in her face--it is so bright and eager."  Then he laughed
at his thoughts.  "I remember, that day up on the Cut, I quite
accidentally hit upon a nickname they used to her at home--Miss
Inquisitive--and she flared up at me like a rip-rap.  She was always
wanting to know, I believe."

"She is still," said Fastnet, laughing, "though she must have learned a
good deal in all these years.  She told me once that she was born
curious, and that she was especially curious to know all about what
came after this life.  She said she thought the thought that she was
going to solve that greatest of all puzzles would take away all fear of
death when the time came.  That was just after I came here.  She must
have been about fifteen then."

Blair's time was very short.  He left that afternoon for Edinburgh to
spend his last two days with his old friends, Mr. and Mrs. MacTavish.
He was to join Mr. Gerson in London on Wednesday and sail on Thursday.

Mr. MacTavish had been a father to him from the time he walked along
the Cut--the very day after little Jean Arnot's prattle had set him on
the boy's track--and found him, prostrate on the flat stone, still
wrestling with Prop. 47.

He had been just there himself when a small boy, struggling against the
retarding clay of a narrow agricultural home.  He knew the sturdy
independence that would be in the boy; and, in his own full knowledge,
went to work warily.  The slightest hint of charity, and the shy, proud
one would be off.

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.

"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--

"Goodness gracious me! why does that herd-laddie stick in my brain so?"

A quite dispassionate dissector of the emotions and their origins might
have come to the conclusion that it was, after all, only a case of the
heart performing its natural function of feeding the brain.  For the
heart is the life.

She laughed at herself; but the herd-laddie remained in her thoughts,
and one day, before she went south, she actually found herself sitting
on that very same piece of rock where she had sat ten years before, and
in imagination he sat on the adjacent rock, munching his thick oatcake
and broken pieces of cheese.

"What a greedy little pig I was!" she said to herself, as she sat
leaning forward with her chin in her hand.  "But I don't believe he'd
have taken a bite from me, however much I'd wanted him to."

She looked at the slab where the windmill had been, and at the pool
where the gentleman had washed.  He looked as if he had been
strenuously washing ever since.  What a radiant face he had!  It did
not come from much washing, she knew; but somehow the two things linked
themselves in her mind.  It was the white fire inside that lit up the
outside: a real man--a man to trust infinitely--a man to----

She sat looking out over the mighty panorama of hills and lochs and
mountains opposite--"Gare Loch, Loch Goil, Loch Long, Ben Lomond, Ben
Ihme, The Cobbler, Holy Loch."  She knew most of them still.  How the
sight of them all brought him back to her!  And, in all probability, he
would never see them again.  "We are going among perilous peoples."

Well! he had done very wonderfully; he was fulfilling the highest
aspirations of his boyish heart.

And she?  She was a lady, and very rich, as she had said she would be.
And she remembered the touch of scorn with which the herd-laddie had
said, "Yes, that's about all you can be, I suppose."

Close behind her the swift brown waters of the Cut hurried headlong to
the town--one long, unceasing blessing.  "Men may come and men may go,
but we go on for ever," sang the bubbling waters against the rough rock
walls of their narrow way.

"Surely I am one of the most useless of God's creatures," said Jean
Arnot, as she wandered slowly back towards the paper-mill and home.

THE MAN'S MAN

Unflecked blue sky above, with a blazing white sun in it.  A mighty
mountain peak, with bald summit, seamed sides mantled with greenery,
and round its waist, where it sat in the water, a narrow band of
gleaming white sand and tufted cocoa-palms, like an Island woman's
girdle.  A smooth, dark, ruffled mirror of lagoon; and farther out,
with gaps here and there, a barrier reef on which the hungry sea chafed
and roared in ceaseless thunder.  Two white men and a menacing crowd of
brown ones.

"Ready?" asked the elder of the two men.

He was tall and thin, white-haired and grey-bearded, and his eyes shone
like stars.  His face was bronzed with much sun.  There was a glow in
it which did not come from the sun, a mighty determination which did
not come from mere strength of will, a sweet white soul-fire which had
made him a power throughout the islands of the Southern Seas.

"I am ready," said the younger man.

His face was brown also, but not bronzed.  There was a lighter patch of
tightened skin above each cheek-bone.  His jaw was set so grimly that
it looked aggressive.  His lips were tightly closed.  His eyes were
unnaturally wide at the moment.  He looked slightly raised--fey, in
fact, as a man looks when he and death meet face to face in a narrow
way.

In front, the crowd of Islanders stood waiting for them at an angle of
rock where the white beach curved round into the land.  They carried
clubs and spears, and swung them restlessly.  Behind, on the smooth
reflexive swell of the lagoon, a white boat, just pushed off from the
shore, rode like a seabird with wings outstretched for swoop or flight.
Farther out a waiting schooner, whose white sails shivered softly to a
head breeze.

"Remember, my son," said the elder man quietly, "one sign of flinching
and it is finished.  Now let us go."  He bared his white head and said
softly, "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Spirit,"
and went up towards the dark men like the courteous Christian gentleman
he was.  The younger man did the same.

[Illustration: One sign of flinching and it is finished.]

The natives drew back round the rock; the white men followed.  The men
in the boat watched intently, and then listened and gazed at the angle
of the rock.  Their orders were to wait.

The two men passed out of sight, the elder, quiet and calm, as if going
for a stroll in his mission garden, the younger, strung to martyr
pitch, ready to endure to the utmost.  The islanders retreated foot by
foot; the white men followed steadily.  Then, suddenly, clubs whirled
and spears bristled, and the brown men turned and rolled on the white
like a flood, and parted them.

The elder man stood and eyed them steadfastly.  He had been through it
many times before.  Death and he had been old friends and
fellow-travellers for many a year, and the passing of The Gate was to
him but the entrance to a larger life.  He spoke to them in words he
thought they might understand.  For a moment the two men were like two
white rocks in a foaming mountain stream.  Brown arms, clubs, spears
whirled about them.  Not one man in ten thousand could have stood it
unmoved.

The white-haired man was such a one.  He stood.  The younger man's face
broke; the strings had been drawn too tight.  He cast one swift glance
round.

In an instant the silvery crown beside him ran blood, and disappeared.
With bent head inside his folded arms the younger man dashed at the
throng, and sent the brown men spinning, as he had sent men of a
brawnier breed spinning on the football field at home.  He burst
through them in spite of blows and cuts.  He was close up to the wild
eddy under which his old friend lay when a well-flung club caught him
deftly in the neck and brought him down in a heap.  The brown men
danced madly, and let their shouts go up.  They took the younger man by
the heels, and dragged him to where the body of the elder lay, and
flung him down on top of it.  Then the sailors from the boat burst on
them with a yell, and sent them scattering.

It was days before he recovered consciousness, weeks before he could
lie in a chair on the verandah of the distant mission-house--weak from
loss of blood, weaker still in other ways.

They tended him lovingly.  There were gracious women there who
ministered to him like angels.  To them he was hero, saint, martyr but
once removed.  To himself----!

He was almost too weak to think about it yet.  He was hacked to pieces,
and bruised to pulp.  When he tried to move, it seemed to him that not
one sound inch of flesh was left him.  When he tried to think, all the
little blood that was left in him rushed up into his head and set it
humming and buzzing, and dyed his face crimson under the partly
bleached tan.

His mind was still in a state of confusion; his thoughts were almost as
broken as his body.  He remembered facing the bristling brown men.  He
could see their shaggy heads and twisted faces, their white teeth,
their gleaming eyes, and the whirl of their brandished weapons.  After
that all was blurred, and broke off into sudden darkness.  He had a dim
remembrance of intense strain and a sudden snap.  He groped for the
ends of the broken threads, but they were hidden in the outer void.  He
was still very weak.

He accepted gratefully all that was done for him, but for the most part
lay in silence.  His sufferings were great, but no word of complaint
ever passed his lips.  If he had permitted himself any such, it would
have been that he still lived when his leader died.  To all he was a
monument of patient resignation.

So great was his depression, and so slow his recovery, that it was
decided at last to send him home, as the only hope of full
recuperation.  He acquiesced, as he had done in everything they
suggested, but in this matter with evident reluctance.  He thought it
unlikely he would ever return.  His heart had been in the work, but he
had been tried and found wanting.  The work, he said to himself, was
for abler and more faithful hands.

So the mission schooner carried him to the nearest port of call, and in
due course he was lying in a deck chair carefully swathed in plaids,
and the great steamer bore him swiftly homewards.

The story of the martyrdom and of his heroic defence of his old friend:
how they two had gone up alone to the peaceful assault of an island of
the night; how he had fought for his leader till he could fight no
longer, and had fallen at last wounded to death across his dead
body,--it had all preceded him.  The very sailors were proud to have
him on board.  The officers made much of him in an undemonstrative way.
The ladies fluttered round his chair like humming-birds, and loaded him
with attentions.

And he suffered it all in silence.  He was still very weak.  How could
he turn his sick soul inside out to these strangers, and what good to
do so?

He had not yet decided what course to take when he got home.  He had
thought and thought, till he was sick of thinking, sick of himself,
sick of life.  Ah! why had he not died with the brave old man out there
on the shore of the creek behind the rocks?  Why had his nerve given
way at that supreme moment?  Why had this bitter cross been laid upon
him?  Far better to have died--far easier, at all events.  But easier
and better run opposite ways as a rule, and have little in common.

Should he confess the whole matter, and retire from the field and find
some other way of life?  Truly he felt no call to any other work.  This
had been the one desire of his life; he had grown from youth to manhood
in the hope of it.  He believed he could still be of service when once
he got over the effects of his present fall.  Should he not rather bury
the dead past, with God as only mourner, and start afresh?--to fail
once more when the strain came again, he said to himself with exceeding
bitterness.  He grieved over his lapse as another might grieve over a
deliberate crime.  But he postponed any final decision as to the future
till he should feel stronger in mind and body.

There was a noted writer on board, a realist of realists.  He sought
impressions at first hand.  He cultivated the sick man's acquaintance,
greatly to his discomfort.

"Mr. Blair," he said, sitting down by his side one day, "I would very
much like to know just how you felt, and what you thought of, when you
were fighting those brown devils.  Won't you tell me?"

And the sick man roused himself for a moment, and looked at him with
that in his eye which the other comprehended not, and said slowly, "I
felt like the devil and I thought of the devil," and not another word
would he say.  And the writer pondered much on the saying, but never
got to the bottom of it or knew how true it was.

His people met him at the landing-place, the reverend father and the
white-haired mother, proud to be known even as the foster-parents of
such a son, grateful for one more sight of him in the flesh.  How could
he break their hearts by telling them what a broken reed their trusted
one had proved?  They rejoiced over him greatly, and said to one
another that as his strength came back the cloud that lay on his
spirits would be lifted.  Their gentle encomiums stung him like darts.

But, by degrees, broken body and broken spirit were healed.  Slowly and
thoughtfully he made up his mind that the past should be past.  He
would go out again.  He would take his stand in the forefront of the
battle in the hope of an honourable death--for he held his life forfeit
to the past.

Decision brings a certain peace of mind.  He was happier than he had
been since he leaped out of the white boat on to the shore of the Dark
Island that morning--so long ago that it seemed to belong to a previous
life.

The old people said God-speed to his decision.  They had possessed him
once again after giving him up for good.  It was more than they had
ever hoped for.  They were thankful.

All interested in mission work hailed his decision with enthusiasm.  He
was common property and too big to be monopolised by any one sect.
They had not been able to make one quarter as much of him as they had
wished.  He had quietly declined to be fêted and lionised.  They
considered he carried his modesty to too great an extreme.  They would
have made capital out of him and kindled fresh enthusiasms for the
cause by the sight and sound of him.  It was with the greatest
difficulty that he avoided it all, using the plea of ill-health till
his bodily appearance would no longer countenance it.

Once his decision was made known, however, they decided to drag him out
of his retirement, and by dint of persistent importunity prevailed on
him at last to appear at a public meeting.  He consented with
reluctance, and only because it was represented to him as a matter of
duty.

As the time drew near he began to fear that he was in for more than he
had expected.  But he had given his word, and he would not draw back.

There were clever men at the head of the movement.  Thousands of
interested men and women were hungering for a sight of the
almost-martyr.  They had seen his portrait in the illustrated
papers--how joyously the old mother had responded to the many requests
for it!--but they wanted to see him with their eyes and hear him with
their ears, and the younger folk were to remember all their lives that
they had done so.  And so, without going into details with him, the
leaders of the various societies quietly arranged matters on a generous
scale.  There were men of imagination among them too, and they prepared
a dramatic touch for the meeting which they calculated would make it go
with a swing.  It went beyond their expectations.

When the young missionary stepped on to the platform he stopped short,
and for a moment looked almost as fey as he had done when he leaped out
of the white boat that morning on the beach of Dark Island.  But there
must be no drawing back.  He had flinched once--never again!

The chairman of the meeting was a philanthropic Cabinet Minister.  As
he welcomed the hero of the hour the great audience rose and waved and
shouted.

The young man clasped the chairman's welcoming hand as though he were a
drowning man, and that hand the one only hope of safety.  Then he sank
into the chair provided for him, and dropped his face into his hand.

All this was torture to him.  Why could they not have let him go out
quietly to his work, to his death?  No bristling mob of savages that
ever could confront him was half so appalling to him as that great
well-dressed crowd of enthusiastic men and women and children, gathered
to do him honour.  Honour!  And he before God a dishonoured man--a man
who had failed when the pinch came.  He groaned in his heart, and
wished that he had not come.

But the chairman was speaking, speaking of him, and what he had
done--what he was supposed to have done--in warm, appreciative words
and flowing periods, and the audience was as still as a flower-garden
on a summer afternoon.  In the young man's soul there was a great
stillness also, a stillness equal almost to that which had fallen on
him when he came out of the shadows and lay in the verandah of the
mission house.

His eyes wandered unseeingly over those solid banks of faces, all
turned on him in eulogy of what he had not done.  Those thousands of
eyes seemed to pierce his soul.

One face caught his attention and held it, the face of a girl sitting
in the third row from the front.  Even in his agony he recognised it,
as how could he help when it had been so constantly with him in his
thoughts.  The smooth white brow, like a little slab of polished ivory;
the level brows; the large dark eyes looking up at him with something
akin to reverence--the beautiful eyes with lustrous points in them; the
sweet oval of the lower part of the face; the firm little chin and
slightly parted lips, emphasising the old inquiring look which he knew
so well: it was a face any man might remember with gratitude for the
mere sight of it.  It was the face he had at once longed for the sight
of and feared to meet, since ever the thought of coming home had been
suggested to him.  And now here it was, more beautiful than even his
dreams of it--inquiring, hopeful, trustful.  And he must satisfy the
inquiry--and dash the hope, and shatter the trust for ever.  Oh, it was
hard!  It was grievously hard!  His life laid down then and there would
have been a small price to pay for the confirmation of her belief in
him.  And he must destroy it and still live on!

But what was this?  The chairman had turned to him in his speech, the
flower-garden in front had suddenly become a fluttering snowbank.

"Mr. Blair does not happen to belong to that particular section of the
Church to which I belong, and which, as the State Church of the realm,
retains, and rightly retains, within its own hands the appointment of
its own high officers.  There are some of us who, as we grow older, and
perhaps wiser, regret more and more that any differences should remain
among the followers of Christ.  We would fain see them done away with.
We would cast down all fences and walls of partition, and meet our
Christian brothers and sisters on an absolute equality, on the common
platform of love and service to the one Master.

"This meeting to-night, of many sects with one common object, is one
step in the right direction--a great step.  And here is another.  The
necessity for a supreme hand and head in the guidance of the mission
enterprises of the Outer Islands is apparent to all.  For such a
position we require a man of tried courage and endurance, a man who can
look death in the face without flinching, a man who holds his own life
of small account, and who is ready at any moment to lay it down in the
service of the cause he loves.  Of such stuff martyrs are made.  That
the man who has given us such signal proofs of his fidelity and courage
should be chosen for so onerous and so honourable a post is a matter of
great satisfaction to us all.  Mr. Blair, as all the world knows, has
proved his fitness in a time of grievous danger and perplexity.--a time
which I do not hesitate to say would have tried the nerve of any man to
breaking-point, under a strain which might have broken any ordinary
man, and small blame to him.  But here"--and he laid his hand upon
young Blair's shoulder--"we have the one man who did not break down,
and it is this man whom we would rejoice to recognise as the first
bishop of the Outer Islands.  I am authorised to request Mr. Blair's
acceptance of this arduous and honourable post, without reference to
any question of form or creed.  And that request is made, not in the
name or on behalf of my own Church only, but in the names and on behalf
of all the Churches represented by the missions to the Outer Islands.
It is a common point of union.  Mr. Blair's acceptance of the post
will, perhaps, be one step towards that greater union of the Churches
to which we look hopefully forward, and I earnestly hope that he will
see fit to accept this joint and unanimous request of the Churches."
And he sat down with glowing face amidst thunders of applause.

And Kenneth Blair?  Oh! why could they not have left him to work out
his redemption in quietness and silence?  Now it was not possible.
Those thousands of eyes burnt into his soul.  The words he had listened
to pierced him like two-edged swords.  Silence was no longer possible.
To accept all this, as if it were his rightful due, was to hang a
millstone round his neck which would drag him down to perdition.

When the tumult died at last into silence, the young man got up and
stood and gripped the railing of the platform.

His face was white and set.  "A man of indomitable will," they said.

His eyes burnt with a gloomy fire.  "He has seen strange and terrible
things," they said.

He swayed slightly once or twice before he found his voice.  "He has
been very near to death," they said.

And then he began to speak, quietly, as one who might need all his
strength before he was done; but there was a timbre in it, born of
outdoor speaking, which carried to the remotest corner, and a thrill in
it which found its way to every heart.  And, of all that great
assembly, the only face he saw with any distinctness was the face of
the girl in the third row, with its calm brow and its lustrous
up-glance.  He spoke to it.  He watched it.  If he could convince that
one face of all that was in him, he felt that it would be well with him.

In his emotion he overlooked all formalities.  He found his voice at
last, and said, "My friends, the words I have just been listening to
have been to me as sword-thrusts through the heart."

The silence was intense.  Every ear and every eye was upon him.  He saw
only the calm, sweet face of the girl in the third row.

"I have a very terrible confession to make to you.  Had I known what
was intended this evening I should not have been here, but no slightest
word of it reached me.  My sole desire has been to get back to my work
out yonder, and to lay down my life in it.  I have been told that I am
a man of courage and endurance ... of tried nerve ... of unflinching
fidelity.  There was a time when I too believed this of myself."  He
spoke very slowly and with a solemn impressiveness which those who
heard it never forgot to the last day of their lives.  "But between
that and this there is a deep gulf ... and at the bottom of that gulf
lies the dead body of my dear friend and chief.  His death lies at my
door."

An almost imperceptible movement ran through the audience, as though a
cold breath shook it with a simultaneous chill.  The face of the girl
in the third row remained steadfastly calm.  If anything, it seemed to
glow with a deeper intensity of hopeful inquiry.  "Say what you will, I
believe in you!" it said.

"The whole truth of what happened on that dreadful day has never been
told.  I will confess that I had dared to hope that it might never need
to be told--that it might lie between myself and God--that I might be
permitted by Him to work out my redemption on the field of my failure,
chastened, and perhaps strengthened, by what has passed.  For, at a
vital moment, when the flinching of an eyelid meant disaster, I ...
flinched.

"This is what happened.  As we went up towards the savages that day, my
dear old friend asked me if I was ready.  I was ready.  I said so.  He
said, 'Remember, one sign of flinching and it is finished,' and we went
up and round the corner.  We were going, as I believed, to certain
death, and I was ready--at least, and truly, I believed so.  When the
savages rushed in upon us, the horror of it broke upon me like a
deluge.  I glanced round to see if there was no possible way of escape
for us.  But there was no way.  My dear old chief's head was crimson
already with blood, and he went down among them.  I burst through--and
I know no more.  They tell me my body was found on top of his.  It may
be so.  How it got there I do not know.  What I do know is--that at
that supreme moment, when I believed myself to be strong, I found
myself weak.  When I believed myself ready for a martyr's death, I
tried to escape by shameful flight.  I was weighed and found wanting,
and the remembrance of it has seared my heart like molten iron, night
and day, since ever I came to myself.  Whether we should have won
through if I had remained firm, God only knows.  But--I flinched and
fled.  It seems to me now that I would sooner die a hundred such deaths
as I fled from then than stand here before you all and confess my
default.  I can accept no honours.  Honours!" with a despairing lift
and fall of the hand.  "I can accept no position based on so terrible a
misconception.  All I ask, and I ask it with the deepest humility, is
that I may be allowed to go out there again.  My life is forfeit to the
past.  It shall be spent--if it be God's will, it shall be laid down
joyfully--in the service to which I believe He called me, and from
which I do not believe He has expelled me."

[Illustration: "My life is forfeit to the past."]

He sat down and covered his face with his hands.  There was a momentary
silence.  The chairman did not quite know what to do.  The face of the
girl in the third row was ablaze with emotion; the dark eyes were
swimming.  She glanced restlessly about to see what was going to
happen; she looked like springing up herself with flaming words.  But
another did it.  A tall, white-haired man, with a flowing white beard
and a face like brown leather, stood up on the platform, and said, in a
voice that went straight to all their hearts--

"My friends, we have all heard.  Some of us understand, because we have
passed through that same dark valley as our young friend.  Dare I, in
all humility, remind you that a Greater than any shrank from the
supreme moment, and prayed, with agonies no man may conceive of, that
His bitter cup might pass from Him?  I tell you, gentlemen," he cried,
in a voice that rang like a trumpet, "that in doing what he has done
here this evening our friend has proved himself a man among men.  He
has said that a hundred savage deaths appear to him less terrible than
the confession he has just made.  And it is a true saying.  Ask your
own hearts.  I could prove to you that no man can answer absolutely for
himself at such a moment; but I will not even argue the point.  Our
friend has been through the fire.  He has been through God's mill.  He
has been hammered on God's anvil.  I tell you that he is true metal.
He has proved it here and now.  I hold it an honour to grasp his hand
and bid him God-speed."

He stretched a sinewy, leather-brown hand to Blair, and the young man
gripped it with a new light in his face, and the two stood facing one
another.

Still holding the young man's hand, the old one turned to the front
again.

"If you agree with me that this is the man we want for the work out
there, rise in your seats."

His voice had rung like a bugle-call through the outer darknesses of
the earth; his name stood but little lower than God's to tens of
thousands who dwelt there, and was held in reverence wherever the
English language was spoken.  That great audience rose to his call as
if a mine had exploded beneath it.  His eyes shone with the light the
black men knew and loved.

"Let us pray," he said; and the young man fell to his knees beside his
chair and dropped his head into his hands again.

CHAPTER IV

A SHAMELESS THING!

The night that followed that meeting at Queen's Hall was the most
tempestuous time Jean Arnot ever passed through.

The dramatic events of the meeting had shaken her hidden soul out of
its sanctuary.  She was thankful to get home intact--so far, at all
events, as outward appearances went.

She went at once to her own room.  She locked herself in, and paced the
floor till she could pace no more.

She could order her steps, but not her thoughts, and her thoughts took
wings and climbed lofty heavens of white-piled clouds, and the
white-piled clouds were all rosy-tipped, because the thoughts that
scaled them came straight from her heart and were tinged with the rosy
gold of her heart's desire.

Oh, wonderful! wonderful!  The great big soul of him!  Was there a
nobler man on earth?

How easy to have let it pass! to have kept it between God and himself
only! to have worked out his redemption in secret!  But he could not,
because he was a true man--the truest man ever born, and the bravest.
Oh the great, big, noble soul of him!

To and fro she paced, and, no matter where she looked, his white, set
face and blazing eyes looked out at her in that agonised strenuity of
appeal which had stirred her so in the hall, stirred her to the depths
till she had had difficulty in sitting still.  It had seemed to her as
though he lost sight of all those straining thousands and spoke only to
her--as though they were all nothing, and she the whole world.  Had he
recognised her, she wondered, or had he perceived, in spite of the
disguisement of her steady face, the intensity of her sympathy, and had
clung to it as to a one and only hope?

And as she paced, and sank down into her chair, which had lost all its
ordinary sense of comfort, and started up and paced again, there sprang
up in her heart a great golden-glowing purpose--a purpose that trapped
her breath and set her gasping when first it peeped out, but which grew
like an escaped genie, and filled the world of her thoughts before she
knew, and was never to be confined within bounds again.

An unheard-of thing!  An incredible thing!  A shameless thing!

Nay, not that--and yet--yes! yes!  Shameless indeed, for shameless
meant without sense of shame, and no sense of shame had she--glory
rather.

An unmaidenly thing, then!  That without doubt, but not without
precedent, and circumstances make laws unto themselves.

But, whatever it was or was not, it grew and grew, stronger and
stronger, and ever brighter in its glowing, golden rose.

As she paced to and fro it seemed to her that her path in life had
suddenly flashed out before her on the darkness of the night.  It was
limned in lines and letters of fire, and they cried to her to follow,
follow, follow.

And now, as she thought it all out, with tightened lips, and crumpled
brow, and eyes that shone, it came home to her, like a revelation, that
all her life had been working up to this starry point.

She thought long and deeply, and then turned up the light and sat down
to her writing-table with a purposeful face.  It was done in a
moment--a couple of lines.  But a single word has changed the destiny
of a nation before this.  Weighty things, words, at times!  Live shells
are playthings to them.

She folded and addressed her letter, and then pondered the best way
over a difficulty.  She wrote two more lines and enclosed them with her
original letter in a larger envelope, and addressed it, and then she
laid her white forehead on the packet for a moment as it lay on the
table.  And then, like one whose ships are burned, or whose golden
bridge is built, she altered the indicator outside her door, so that
her maid would call her at seven, and went to bed.  Once, before she
got to sleep, she smiled to herself and almost laughed out, as she
suddenly remembered that it was Leap Year.  Then she cooled her burning
cheek on the other pillow and went to sleep, and slept soundly, for she
had been living at high pressure these last few hours, and the morrow
would need all her strength.

When the maid brought up her cup of tea in the morning, she handed her
the letter which had stood on the table by her bedside all night, with
these precise directions: "Tell William"--the groom--"to ride into the
city and deliver that letter.  The answer he will take to whatever
address may be given him."

She got up and dressed, and went out for a quick walk in Kensington
Gardens.  At breakfast Aunt Jannet Harvey commented on her appearance.

"Why, child, what a colour you've got!  What took you out so early?"

"I've been bathing in dew and early sunbeams, auntie."

"I couldn't sleep all night for thinking of that young man and his
savages.  It appears to me that that is a very great man, Jean.  If he
lives he will do very noble work.  It needed a big soul to face that
crowd and tell that story as he did it."

"Yes," said Jean.  She had never discussed Kenneth Blair with Aunt
Jannet Harvey, not to the extent of one single word.

After breakfast she found it difficult to settle down to any of her
usual avocations.  She could neither read nor play, and she declined to
go out.  Aunt Jannet Harvey expressed the opinion that such early
rising did not suit her, and Jean confirmed her views by going upstairs
to her room and wandering about there at a loose end and doing
nothing--nothing but think, think, think.

Her maid brought her word that William had returned, having executed
his mission in full; and please would Miss Arnot ride in the afternoon?

Miss Arnot would neither ride nor drive that afternoon, nor would she
require the brougham in the evening.  Mary would please ask Mrs. Harvey
if she wished to drive in the afternoon.  If not, the men's services
would not be required.

CHAPTER V

LEAP YEAR

Kenneth Blair received Miss Arnot's note as he sat at breakfast in the
pleasant room of the quiet little hotel overlooking the Embankment,
where he was staying in company with Mr. and Mrs. MacTavish.  He was to
them as one come back from the dead, and they grudged every minute he
was out of their sight.

The incidents of the previous night had been rather wearing on them
all, and they were later than usual that morning, and, at that,
dallying over an enjoyment that would soon be of the memory only.

The rare colour filled his pale face as he read the two lines of Miss
Arnot's note, and he read them several times, as though frequent
perusal might provoke interpretation.

"DEAR MR. BLAIR,--

"I have an urgent wish to speak with you.  Will you do me the favour of
calling here at 3 p.m. to-day?

"Yours sincerely,
  "JEAN ARNOT."

"I wonder what she wants?" he said meditatively, and handed the note to
the old people.  "I don't think I want to see anybody."

"I think you must comply with her request, my boy," said Mr. MacTavish.
"She has more than ordinary claims upon your consideration, you know."

Blair nodded, and winced involuntarily.  It went a good deal deeper
than the old man knew, and after last night he did not feel quite
himself again yet.  He had a morbid dread of hero-worship, and though
the outward man was healed and shaping well again, the inner man still
felt woefully sore and bruised and humbled.

"She was there last night; she sat about three rows from the front,"
said Mrs. MacTavish.  "I wish you could have seen her face while you
were speaking, Kenneth.  It was like the face of an angel."

Kenneth had seen it, and nothing but it, and the thought of it made it
none the easier for him to comply with her request.

He said quietly: "Well, I'll think about it, and see how I happen to be
situated for three o'clock.  I have to see Mr. Campbell at eleven in
Moorgate Street.  If he has any appointments for me, I might be unable
to go, in which case I'll send Miss Arnot a wire."

But Mr. Campbell knew how short his time was, and so occupied as little
of it as possible; and three o'clock found him at Miss Arnot's dainty
little house in Knightsbridge, overlooking the Park.

He had hesitated--as an intelligent moth might flutter warily just
outside the heat radius of a candle-flame--strongly tempted, desirous,
but doubtful.

For she had occupied much, very much, of his thoughts--too much, he had
angrily said to himself at times--since ever he learned the part she
had had in the making of him.  And quite apart from that, she was so
very charming in herself.  It could hardly be in the power of any man,
he thought, to be much in her company and not have longings for still
closer acquaintance and companionship--and such things were not for
him.  His way lay among the shadows of the outer night, and it must of
necessity be, outwardly at all events, a somewhat lonely way.
Companions he would doubtless have, and the best of all high company.
But home, wife, child--these were not for him.  In his mind's eye he
saw the white beaches, and towering cliffs, and black bosky gorges of
the Dark Islands, and the thunder of the surf was in his ear.  And in
his heart he said bravely, "My home, my wife, my children!"

But his thoughts were never far from her, and now that, in spite of
himself, he was to meet her face to face, they gathered head and had
their way in spite of him.

He had often wondered why she had not married.  She was still young, of
course; but, after all, twenty-five was not so very young for an
unmarried lady of such unusual possessions of mind, body, and estate.

She possessed, he could well believe, an independent spirit.  Had she
not, even at thirteen, told him that one of her aspirations was to do
as she liked?

He had recognised her instantly, and with a start, the previous night.
That was before the drama became exciting.  And he had wondered then if
she had changed her name since last he saw her, or whether "Jean Arnot
was still good enough for her."

And what could she possibly want to say to him?

Possibly--quite likely--in the excitement of the evening's proceedings
she had felt an impulse to do something more for the mission cause than
she had done hitherto.

That was it, no doubt.  Well, they could do with Miss Arnot's
assistance.  Funds were never too ample for the work that cried aloud
to be done.

He was evidently expected.  The maid led him along the hall, through
green baize doors, down a passage, into the library, a beautiful and
cosy room such as he had imagined wealthy people might possibly
possess, if, in addition to all their other possessions, they possessed
a love of books.  It overlooked the garden and the Park, and was as
bright and secluded a little holy of holies as the most devoted
worshipper of the sacred flame might desire.  The Island Mission houses
were--not exactly geographically perhaps, but in every other attribute
and particular--the absolute antipodes and antithesis of this charming
little sanctum.  The walls were lined with bookcases full of richly
bound books, the table was strewn with books and magazines, among
which, and queening it over them all, stood a great night-blue bowl of
white lilac, filling the room with the perfume of the spring.  There
was a cheerful little fire of mixed peat and logs on a flat hearth,
with brass dogs and chains.  A sudden whiff of the peat, as he passed
the hearth, carried him in an instant back into his boyhood.

He glanced at the bountiful shelves, with the hungry look of the
student whose pocket had never at any time been able to keep pace with
his appetite.  For knowledge of books is good, and possession of books
is good, but knowledge and possession combined are still much better.

He was standing looking out into the garden whence the lilac had come,
when Miss Arnot came quietly in.

He turned and bowed.  He had made up his mind to hold himself tightly,
but her welcoming hand drew forth his own, and carried his first line
of defence in a walk-over.

"It was good of you to come," she said impulsively, "and I thank you.
I know your time is very short, and you must have much to do."

"Yes, there is much to do," he said very quietly.  "But I am grateful
to you for, at all events, affording me another opportunity of thanking
you in person----"  But she stopped him with a peremptory little hand.

How beautiful she was, with her wistful face and commanding little
ways!  There was even more than usual of strenuous inquiry in those
shining eyes of hers.

"You are going back on the first of May?"

Her speech was more rapid than usual.  He saw that she was excited.
Probably the remembrance of last night's meeting still held her, he
thought.

"Yes, on the first of May.  And then----I hardly think it likely I
shall ever return to England."

"But why?" she jerked, in her old, quick, want-to-know way.

"Well--you see--I really feel as if I had no right to be here at all.
By rights I ought to be lying under a cairn on the beach of Dark
Island."

"Oh, but that is simply morbid, and the result of your long illness.
You will not feel that way long."

"I hope not.  The work is crying to be done.  Perhaps, after all, I
shall be able to help it more above ground than below."

"Of course you will.  Don't you find it dreadfully lonely out there,
with none but black people about you?"

"They are very fine people, some of them.  And the loneliness only
nails one the tighter to the work.  Besides there are----"

"Has it never struck you that you might possibly help it quite as much
by remaining here as by going out again?"

Oh, Jean!  Jean!

"Never," he said, with a slight flush.  "My work lies there, and I hope
to give my life to it, and to give it up for it if need be, as my dear
old friend gave his."

"But there are others who could do the work just as well, are there
not?"

"Many, I hope.  I hope many will."

"And, if I understand aright, Missionary Societies are always short of
funds, and the work is hindered, or at all events progresses more
slowly, in consequence."

"I have my own views as to that," he said quietly.

"Won't you tell me what they are?  I am greatly interested."

"They are not shared by many of my friends, and I do not obtrude them.
I believe that the work is God's work, and when He sees fit to provide
larger ways and means, larger ways and means will be forthcoming.  If
we had all the money we wanted, we might lose our heads, and go ahead
too fast--scamp the work perhaps, and prove but jerry-builders in the
end.  One cannot forget that it has taken Christianity eighteen hundred
years to arrive at its present position, and that for long periods it
lay almost dormant; whereas, if the Founder had deemed it best to
accomplish the work at one stroke, He could have done it."

"Yes," she said thoughtfully.  "I don't think I ever looked at it in
that light before.  And you are quite determined to go back?"

"Quite determined--only too grateful for the chance."

"And nothing would keep you here?"

"Nothing that I can imagine--except absolute incapacity for the work."

"You would not stop even if"--and she bent forward, with hands tightly
clasped to prevent them jumping visibly before him, and eyes that shone
like stars.  God! how beautiful she was!--"if I begged you to do so?"

He jumped up hastily.

"If you----?  If you begged me to--what?"

And her bright eyes, fixed intently on his lean face, caught the sudden
fierce clench of the teeth inside, which threw the cheek-bones into
bolder prominence.  She noted it--she could almost hear the grinding of
his teeth; and the game was in her hands.  She had the advantage of
understanding what the game was, while he was completely in the dark.

He stood gazing down at her for a moment, and then said more quietly--

"I'm afraid I don't quite understand.  Perhaps my illness has dulled my
brain somewhat."

"No, it hasn't, Mr. Blair.  I was asking you in cold blood if you would
not stay in England and marry me, and use my money from here for the
furtherance of the cause out there."

He stared at her still with all his great heart in his eyes--all of it
that was not jumping in his throat like a baby rabbit.

He gazed down at her for another moment, then bent suddenly before her
and took her hand and kissed it, and said huskily and in jerks--between
the rabbit-kicks--

"You will think no ill of me--if I go--at once.  I dare not stop----"

But she had gripped his hand and held it tight, and stood holding him,
and her face shone and her eyes.

"Then--will you take me with you, Kenneth?"

"Take you with me?"  Her rings cut into her next fingers under the
fierceness of his sudden grip, and she could have sung aloud, for the
grip came right from his heart and told his tale to her.  "Do you mean
it--Jean?"

"Surely."

And yet he had a doubt.  You must bear with him.  You see, he had been
half inside the gates of death, and--well, the proceeding _was_
distinctly out of the common run of things.

"Is it myself--or the work?" he asked almost fiercely.  For the thought
had flashed across him--and not unnaturally--that this was but one more
result of the excitement of the meeting last night.  She had been
shaken out of her usual discretion and decorum, had probably lain awake
all night, and----

But her eyes were steady as stars, and as bright, as she said--

"Both!  But yourself first.  I liked you the first time we met.  I
loved you the second.  I have never ceased to think about you.  Your
going away left a blank in my life.  After last night I love and trust
you more than ever, if that be possible.  Last night my way was made
clear to me."

"Now, glory be to God!" he cried, and kissed the wistful lips that
looked as if they had been waiting long for just that seal to the
compact.  And then he sat down suddenly and covered his face with his
hands, as though what was in him was not even for her eyes.

She sank down on to a footstool beside his chair, and noticed how white
his hand was compared with the great, strong brown hand which had held
hers that day in the Greenock church.

He was himself again in a moment--or suppose we say he came back from
where he had been--and his face was full of the old radiant glow as he
raised it to look at her.

"It _is_ real, isn't it?" he asked in a light-hearted, boyish way.

"I'm real," she said, smiling back at him.  "You seem not quite
yourself."

"Did you ever try to imagine what it would feel like to have every
single desire of your heart suddenly granted to you all in a lump?"

"I don't think I ever did.  It sounds as if it might be too much for
one."

"It is--almost.  And you wonder if it is real and true, or only a vain
imagining.  Jean, is it true that you care for me?"

"No--love you, Ken,--dearly--every inch of you."

"And that you are going to marry me?"

"If you ask me properly."

"Jean, will you marry me and come out with me and share my work?"

"I will!"

He gazed at her steadfastly, and said softly--

"Thank God! it is true!"

He enjoyed that full sunshine of felicity for close on five minutes,
and then said more soberly--

"Do you quite understand, dear, all that you are giving up?  Life out
there----"

"It is enough for me at present to realise what I have gained.  Can you
not understand, dear, that to a woman the time comes when the heart's
love of one man is more to her than all the rest of the whole wide
world?  Life touched its highest with me when you made my fingers bleed
a few minutes ago."

"I made your----" and he snatched her hands and saw the tiny wounds.
"Oh, forgive me!  I did not know----" and he kissed them tenderly.

"Sweet wounds!" she said.  "They told me more than all you have
forgotten to tell me--all that I was aching to know."

"And you really care for me like that, Jean?  For me!  Is it possible?
I wonder why?"

"Perhaps God had something to do with it.  It is so very good that it
must be from Him."

"Yes," he said emphatically.

"And now--when are you going to tell me that you care a little for me,
and are not just taking me because I threw myself at your head and you
could not help yourself?"

"Oh, Jean!  Jean! you knew--though how I cannot tell.  You have been
shrined in my heart since that second time we met, but I knew it was
hopeless----"

"Clever boy!  And you hardly knew me then."

"I knew your eyes the moment I looked into them, and they have never
left me since."

"Such common brown eyes!  But you didn't know what lay behind them?"

"The most beautiful eyes in the world."

And by degrees they settled into quiet talk of the future.

He still feared she did not fully understand all she was giving up, and
conscientiously endeavoured to make it clear to her.

She listened to please him, and because it was sweet to hear him, for
all his thought in the matter was for her and her well-being.

So she let him go on; and when he had exhausted all his arguments, she
said quietly--

"It is all nothing and less than nothing, dearest, compared with the
rest.  Where you go I go.  Your work shall be my work, and your people
my people, and nothing but death shall part us."

And with a heart that seemed like to burst for very fulness of joy in
her, he said, "Amen!"

CHAPTER VI

A SUDDEN WIDE HORIZON

"Mr. Blair!  The young man who spoke at the meeting the other night?
Why, I didn't even know that you knew him, Jean!" said Aunt Jannet
Harvey, gazing at her in wide-eyed wonder.

"Oh, I've known him since I was thirteen!"

"And you never spoke to me about him!  Why I don't remember your ever
even mentioning his name!"

"I don't believe I ever did.  We will make up for it now, auntie."

"And he has really had the audacity to ask you to marry him?"

[Illustration: "And he has really had the audacity to ask you to marry
him."]

"Yes, auntie,"--very meekly.

"And you've said 'yes,' and you're going out with him to the South
Seas?"

"Yes, auntie."

"Well, child, let me tell you what I think about it.  I think you might
have looked much higher, and fared very much worse.  He struck me the
other night as a very noble young man indeed, and I wondered then why
he hadn't made some woman happy.  I believe you will be very happy,
Jean, unless those cannibals kill you and eat you."

"If they eat us both at the same time I don't care," said Jean boldly.
"Yes, I shall be very happy, auntie, for he is the best man in the
whole world."

"And when do you go?"

"Our marriage will make some changes in his plans, of course, and he is
seeing the Society people to-day about an extension of leave.  We
discussed it all yesterday--at least, all that we had time for.  He is
full of plans--such glorious plans!  It is a grand thing to be a man,
and to be built on a great big scale, and to have glorious ideas----"

"And the means to carry them out!  And when did you say you'd be going?"

"In about six weeks probably.  You see, he wants to buy a steamer for
his work among the Islands, and we shall go out in her."

"I shall be quite ready," said Aunt Jannet Harvey "I shall want two or
three new dresses suitable to the climate----"

"You, auntie?  You will go too?"

"Why, of course, child!  You'll need me more than ever out there.
Suppose you fell sick.  Suppose--oh, I can look ahead farther than you
can, perhaps!  I can see a hundred ways in which I can be useful to
you.  And you don't need to fear that I'll be in your way--I'll see to
that.  But I'll be within reach when I'm wanted; and I've always had a
hankering to see those outside parts of the world.  It was my dear
James's dream too.  He was a great botanist, when he had any time to
spare from his logic.  He'll be glad to think the chance has come to me
at last."

And so when Blair came back next day from an exciting time in the city,
Jean solemnly announced--

"You'll only find out by degrees all you've undertaken, young man.
You've got to marry Aunt Jannet Harvey as well."

"Polygamy is still practised out there," he said heartily.  "As a
matter of policy we have to countenance it at times; but we set our
faces against it, because it does not work well.  If this means that
Mrs. Harvey has consented to accompany us----"

"Consented?  She proposed it, or rather took it for granted, and won't
hear a word against it."

"Then my heart is lightened of one of its cares, and I am truly
grateful to Aunt Jannet"--and Aunt Jannet was his from that moment.
"God surely put the thought into your kind heart," he said, as he wrung
the capable old hand warmly.  "You will be more to Jean out there than
words can tell.  I thank you with all my heart."

"I knew it," said Aunt Jannet, with emphasis.  "I wanted to ask you,
Mr. Blair----"

"Kenneth, surely, now, Aunt Jannet!"

"Surely!--Kenneth--what the ladies wear out there."

"Well, the native ladies don't wear much, and the ladies of the
missions wear much what you would here, if you cared only for use and
comfort, and nothing for fashion.  They always look very neat and
clean"--at which Jean smiled reminiscently.

"I see," said Aunt Jannet.  "Jean and I will lay our heads together.  I
think we can live up to that standard, at all events."

He had a cup of tea with them, and then ran along to the hotel to bring
old Mr. and Mrs. MacTavish over to dinner.  And after dinner they sat
and talked and talked, and he laid some of his ideas and plans before
them, and had only just begun when it was time for the old people to go
home to bed.  For his plans and ideas were blossoming in the golden
sunshine like an orchard kept back by a late spring, and flung suddenly
into the quickening warmth of coming summer.

He had gone down that morning to see the secretary of the Society which
had originally sent him out, and to whom he still felt officially
bound, to inform him of the changes in his plans which his marriage
would bring about, and to request an extension of leave.

There happened to be a full meeting of the committee in session when
his name was brought in, and the secretary at once suggested his
introduction to the meeting.  And so, when Blair was shown into the
board-room, expecting to meet Mr. Secretary alone, he found some fifty
ladies and gentlemen eagerly awaiting him.

The great glad light in his face--the light that Jean Arnot had helped
to rekindle--drew all their eyes.  They whispered among themselves that
the Queen's Hall meeting had done him good after all.  Some of them had
been fearing the effects of such tremendous emotion on a weakened body.

The chairman, the noble head of a house devoted to good deeds, gave him
hearty welcome, and said the committee would be delighted to hear any
further details he would like to give them of his work or future plans
in the Dark Islands.

Blair jumped up as the old man sat down.

"I came, sir," he said, "on a very definite errand--to ask for a slight
extension of my stay here."

"It is granted, my dear sir, before you put any limit to it," said the
old man cordially.  "Every member of this committee feels, I am sure,
that the matter may be safely left in your own hands.  We know also
that you are anxious to get back to your work.  I will only express the
hope that it is not through any relapse in health that you think it
necessary."

It certainly did not look like it, as Blair, with a smile that would
not be controlled, said--

"I am glad to say it is not a matter touching my health, though one
that very intimately affects my happiness and well-being.  Since that
somewhat trying meeting in Queen's Hall a piece of very great
good-fortune has come to me----"

"Good indeed to set such a light in his face!" thought they, and hung
upon his words.

"Miss Arnot has consented to become my wife and to join me in the work
out there."

"Miss Arnot!--Jean Arnot!"--a buzz of excitement ran round.  For Miss
Arnot was a personage of importance, known alike for her beauty, her
wealth, and her good deeds.  Rumour, indeed, had fixed upon Miss Arnot
as the mysterious donor for the last two years of a £1,000 note each
year for the special benefit and use of the South Sea Mission.

And he was going to marry Miss Arnot, and she was going out with him!
No wonder there was a light in his face!

But he was speaking again.

"You will see, sir, at once that this happy circumstance brings about
many changes in my plans and hopes.  The vista of usefulness which it
opens before me--before us, may I say?--is magnified one hundred-fold.
Miss Arnot dedicates her fortune, herself, and her enthusiasms to the
work.  There is a mighty field out there.  It is not white to the
harvest--it is black as darkest night.  By God's help we hope to lift
the fringes and let in some rays of His blessed light.  I shall have
the opportunity of discussing my ideas in detail with your secretary.
But broadly speaking, this is how they point.  We contemplate
purchasing and fitting out a steamer suitable for mission-work among
the Islands, and going out in her ourselves.  We would like several
assistants, married or unmarried--but big men, please!  Big heads are
good, and big hearts are better, but best of all if they are contained
in big bodies.  You have no idea what a vast impression a big man makes
on those big Islanders compared with a small man.  As to the size of
the ladies, I would not venture to offer any suggestions.  But the men
should be--must be--big men.  One further matter, sir, and I have done.
Those Islanders must come under the protection of the British flag at
once.  And I want--you will not misunderstand me if I go the length of
saying _I must have_--the appointment of Commissioner or Deputy
Commissioner, or any position that will give me the official right to
deal with certain matters which block our way out there.

"The wrongs the people of some of those Outer Islands suffer, from the
scum of the earth who prey upon them, to their utter ruin of body,
soul, and spirit, are almost incredible.

"I could tell you facts--bald, brutal facts--concerning the labour
traffic carried on there which would make you shudder and doubt my
veracity.  But I have seen these things with my own eyes, and heard
them with my own ears, and been powerless to stop them.

"Now, by God's help, and Miss Arnot's, I will wage war on these
doings--hot war--yes, red-hot war with Maxim and Lee-Metford, if
necessary"--his voice rang out militantly--"on those who do these
dreadful deeds.  Those hideous wrongs shall cease, and those poor
kinsfolk of ours--God's children as much as we, though they know it not
yet--shall have their chance.  I would of course prefer to act
officially in the matter; but, officially or not, act I shall.

"This may seem to you strange talk for a peaceful man.  I have a
precedent.  As long as I tread in the Master's steps I shall not go far
wrong."

He sat down, and they cheered him to the echo.  They had heard many
noble men and women speak in that room; but I doubt if they had ever
heard words which gripped their hearts as these had done.

The news of the approaching marriage of the penniless young missionary
to the great heiress, Miss Arnot, spread rapidly and evoked much
comment, candid, caustic, congratulatory, from Jean's friends and
otherwise.

"Clever man, that young sky-pilot!"

"Absolutely thrown herself away, my dear, and actually going to live
among naked savages!"

"Trust the missionary to feather his own nest.  Why should he lose
sight of No. 1 while saving brother man?"

"The missionary man has done himself well.  Poor rich Miss Arnot!"

"Oh, well, you know, she's twenty-seven if she's a day, and when a girl
gets to twenty-seven----!  And they say he's exceedingly good-looking.
Still, don't you know----"

These behind her back.  And to her face:

"He's simply charming, dear.  I envy you--I do indeed!

"He's a splendid fellow, Miss Arnot.  You will be very happy together."

"My dear,"--this from a very old lady, bearing a very old title, whose
early married life had been a hideous martyrdom--"you have chosen very
wisely.  He is a noble Christian gentleman, and he would lay down his
life for you.  Believe me, dear, compared with what you have got, all
the wealth of the world and all its titles are nothing but dust and
ashes and misery.  I know it!"

And everybody else knew that she knew it.  And Jean kissed her very
tenderly.

And Mr. Punch, when he heard of the matter, in his playful little way
quoted:

"Doän't thou marry for munny, but--goä wheer munny is."

CHAPTER VII

SOME ODD FURNISHINGS AND A HONEYMOON

Aunt Jannet Harvey's wardrobe was rapidly approaching completion.

She and Jean had had a busy six weeks.  They had neither of them ever
been quite so busy in all their lives before, and the curious thing was
that it seemed to agree with them mightily, and they, both one and the
other, had visibly renewed their youth under the demands made upon them.

Aunt Jannet developed new and surprising traits of character every day;
and as for Jean, the days were not half long enough for the joy of life
that lay in wait for each one as it came.

She and Kenneth Blair had been quietly married by special licence a
month ago, and the sight of their faces, wherever they had been since,
had brought new ideals and new possibilities of life to all who looked
upon them--all except the cynics and philosophers of Jean's former
world, of course.

"Quite so!" said they.  "But just wait till the bloom is off the
honeymoon, and she finds herself all alone with her little tin god
among the savages!  Then she'll find out what's what and sigh for the
vanished fleshpots and fripperies."

But there were no signs of incipient sighing about Mrs. Kenneth Blair
at present, anyway.  She had always been sweet and charming, with a
wistful eagerness in her face that filled you with a desire to do for
her any mortal thing she might require at your hands.  There was still
something of that about her, but it was almost hidden now beneath the
radiant happiness which enveloped her.

She had urged Blair to a speedy wedding--where no urging whatever was
needed--for the delight of spending their last weeks at home, in the
house where most of her life had been passed.  She had had long and
peremptory interviews with her lawyers, making wise provision for all
possible eventualities, so far as it was possible to foresee them.  It
was not till she was half-way across to the other side of the world
that the aunties in Greenock, and old Mr. and Mrs. MacTavish, and
several other old friends, learned what she had been up to, and then
she was well out of their reach.

[Illustration: She had long and peremptory interviews with her lawyers.]

And every day since, she and her husband had been out in the
market-place with open purse and very definite ideas as to their
requirements, and the things they had bought were very extraordinary
and about as different from the usual purchases of newly-married
couples as they possibly could be.

_Item_.--One 300-ton auxiliary schooner, built to Class 17 A.1., by
Scott & Sons, Greenock; dimensions 143 O.A.; 23-½ ft. beam; 13 ft.
draught; 7 ft. headroom, etc.  A handsome, roomy boat, stoutly built
for comfort and long voyages to the order of a financial magnate, whose
health unfortunately broke down before she was quite ready for him, and
forced him to seek more genial climatic, and other conditions, in
Argentina.

Mr. and Mrs. Blair ran up to Greenock to inspect her, found her exactly
to their liking, settled the matter in five minutes in the office
inside the big gates, christened her the _Torch_ with a hastily
procured bottle of champagne, gave orders for the duplication of every
piece of machinery she contained; walked out of the big gates
ship-owners, and dropped in on the astonished aunties in Brisbane
Street and announced that they had come for a cup of tea and to stop
one night.

They stopped more than one night, however, for after tea Blair walked
in to see the Rev. Archibald for a last talk and a pipe of peace.  And
when the Rev. Archibald recovered wind and wits from the rapid details
Blair gave him of the work he was engaged on, he at once offered to
find him a crew through some of the members of his church.  Blair
desired nothing better, and in five minutes the maid of the Manse was
skipping through the dripping streets with kilted skirts to summon to
instant conference some nearer members who might be able to advise in
the matter.  He laid his plans before them, told them to a hair the
kind of men he required both for officers and crew, and went back to
Brisbane Street in due course, comfortably assured in his own mind that
within two days the _Torch_ would be fitted with a crew worthy of her
and the work for which she was destined.

Next day the ship-owners went out for a walk, and did not return till
close on tea-time.

They had been on their honeymoon trip: past the cemetery gates, up the
brae between the brown stone houses, past the pond, up the cinder path,
and along that glorious walk, with the swift brown water of the Cut
swirling past to its appointed work in mills and town, on the one side;
and on the other, across the brimming firth, the everlasting hills,
grey and green and purple and black, as the sunshine chased the shadows
to their hiding-places in the glens; the full sea welling about their
feet, now green, now blue; and the sky overhead bluest blue after the
rain, with piles of snowy cloud passing along in solemn silence like a
procession of the chariots of God.

They did not speak much, hardly a word, but walked hand in hand like a
pair of country lovers, till they came to where a flat stone lay
alongside the beginnings of a cabin.

And there they stopped; and looking into one another's faces by a
common impulse, put their arms round one another's necks and kissed,
with brimming hearts, and eyes that saw none of the glories around
because of the glory within them, which was too much for either sight
or sound.

The happy tears were running down Jean's cheeks, but they were
swallowed up in reminiscent smiles as her husband seated her gently on
one projecting rock and himself on the other.

"This is my twelfth birthday," he began; and when Miss Inquisitive
looked at him out of her sweet brown eyes, still soft from their recent
shower, he explained: "To all intents and purposes my life began that
day I met you here, though there had been a previous troubled life in
which my dear father gave me all he had to give--the desire to learn."

"And I am about two years old," she said, smiling; and when she saw
that he did not understand, explained:

"After meeting you again that second time in the church, when you
hardly recognised me----"

"I knew you the moment I looked into your eyes."

"I came up here the next day--I did not know why, but something drew
me, and I came.  And I sat down here on this stone, and saw you sitting
on that stone munching oatcake and cheese, and thought what a greedy
little pig I was not to have made you take some of my sandwiches----"

"You couldn't have made me.  I wouldn't have touched one for----"

"I know.  But I ought to have made you, all the same.  And then I
thought of you as you were now--that is, then, you know--and what a
great, big, strong soul and body you had become, and what great things
you were going to do, and how you had got your heart's desire.  And
then I thought of myself, and the little I had done with all my
opportunities.  And after that you insisted on coming into my thoughts
at all times, and I could not get rid of you.  And then you sailed, and
I knew I should never see you again, and life felt hollow and hopeless.
And then I saw in the papers about your being murdered.  And then you
came home, and--here we are.  And oh, Ken! it is almost too good to be
true."

"Not a bit of it, my dear; it is only just beginning."

Then he drew out two parcels from his pockets, and hers contained some
neat little sandwiches and cookies with jam inside, and his contained
oatcakes and cheese.

And, being in a raised mood, she laughed till she cried at his oatcakes
and cheese, and then insisted on dividing up equally all round, and
vowed that his fare was quite as good as her own.

"Of course it is," he said.  "I knew that all the time.  A boy on the
hillsides who can't enjoy oatcakes and cheese would deserve to go
empty."

When they had eaten, they still sat looking out over the water at the
hills and lochs opposite.  In all likelihood they would never see that
fairest of scenes again, and they could not have too much of it.

And after they had sat a long time in silence, Blair, leaning forward
with his arms on his knees and his eyes drinking in great draughts of
delight, said, suddenly--but slowly, as though the words had to be
called, or recalled, from afar, and said them, not to her or for her,
but to and for something quite outside them both--said them, in fact,
as though he were impelled to say them, and could not help himself--

  "The hills of God stand fast and sure."

The words described those hills opposite exactly.  Then a pause, and
presently--

  "His mighty promises endure
  For ever and for evermore."

Then he fell silent again, and thoughtful, and presently--

  "His Mercy is a boundless sea,
  For ever flowing, full and free."

She saw it there before her just as he saw it.  And after another
pause--

  "Through Time into Eternity."

She looked at him quietly and questioningly, but his gaze was fixed
absorbedly on the opposite shore.  It seemed almost as if he had
forgotten her for the moment.  She was content to watch him and to
listen to him--

  "And as the wide blue sky above,
  Encircling us where'er we move."

There it was above them.  The chariots had passed away.  The sky was
unflecked blue--

  "So is His all-enfolding Love."

Then came a longer pause, and she thought he had ended, but she would
not speak.  And presently he began again--

  "For these, Thy gifts, we thank Thee, Lord!
  Hills, sea, and sky, take up the word,
  And thank Thee!--thank Thee!--thank Thee, Lord."

He sat still, gazing out intently at the hills and the sea and the sky,
and sat so long without a word that at last she spoke.

"Whose is that, Ken?  Surely he must have sat just here, and seen just
that."

He turned slowly to her, as though he found it difficult to leave those
wonders beyond.

"I really do not know, dear....  They seemed to come of their own
accord from somewhere.  But whether I recalled them from somewhere
else, or whether they came hot from the anvil, I do not know.  I do not
think I ever made a line of poetry in my life.  There has been always
so much else to be done."

"I think you must have made them," she said.

Then, in turn, she had her own amusing little monologue.  For she began
suddenly telling off the lochs and hills, just as he had named them to
her that other day--"Loch Goil, Loch Long, Ben More, Ben Lomond, The
Cobbler, Ben Ihme, Holy Loch!"

"We shall often think of them when the prospect is a very different
one," he said quietly.  "You never regret all that you are going to
leave behind you, Jean?"

"Never for one moment, dear.  I am taking with me, and going to, so
very much more than I leave behind, that my heart is full of gladness,"
she said.  "There is not room for the smallest shadow of a shadow of
regret."

And they joined hands again and went on along the windings of the path,
in and out of the curves and dimples of the mountain's breast, till the
bold peaks of Arran rose purple in the distance, and they came to the
Sheils Farm.

Blair's kinsfolk had long since left the place.  He just took a look
round the familiar byres and stables, and poked his head into a room
whence a fresh-complexioned dairy-maid, in short blue skirts and bare
feet, was busily chasing hens.  He came out with a reminiscent smile on
his face, and they turned down the hill towards Inverkip.  He led her
by the short cuts his boyish feet had known so well; past the old
burying-ground, where the body-snatchers plied their gruesome trade and
the village folk sat up night after night to protect their dead; past
the gates of Ardgowan to the sea.  And so along the shore road, with
the waves splashing up among the boulders on one side, and the dark
policies on the other, and the great trees meeting overhead; past the
sturdy white pillar of the Cloch into Ashton, and so at last home.  A
honeymoon trip which neither of them ever forgot as long as they lived.

"Well, you two," said Aunt Jannet, when they came in.  "We began to
think you'd given us the slip and gone across the border without saying
goodbye."

"We've been a long round," said Blair, "about----"

"About twelve years," said Jean.

"Then you must be starving.  We expected you'd come home ravenous, and
provided accordingly."

"We've been living on the fat of the land," laughed Jean; but they both
fell to all the same, and proved beyond doubt that high thought and
good living were by no means incompatible.

CHAPTER VIII

GOING STRONG

That same evening a burly, middle-aged man came to the house and
requested audience of Mr. Blair.

He bore the unmistakable hall-mark, and Kenneth liked the looks of him
and the ring of his voice.

The two men eyed one another closely as they shook hands.

"Mr. Duncan told me you were wanting a captain for your schooner, Mr.
Blair.  I only heard it half an hour ago, and I've come straight."

Blair nodded.  "What are your qualifications?  It is not everybody's
job, you know."

"I know all about it, sir.  And I think I'm the man for it.  My name is
Cathie--John Cathie.  I sailed my own ship as master for over fifteen
years.  Quitted the sea three years ago because I'd made enough to live
on and the wife wanted me to stop ashore.  She died six months ago.
I've neither chick nor child, and I want back to the water.  When
you've spent thirty-five years with live water under your feet, the
land comes strange to you!"

"Ever been in the South Seas?"

"Spent ten years in the Island trade, sir.  Know 'em like a book, from
the Carolines to the Paumotus; and if you can find a brown man in the
whole stretch that has a word against John Cathie I'll--well, you can
name your own forfeit."

"And the white men?"

"Ah--there!  Most of 'em all right.  Some I'd like to see strung higher
than Haman.  But that kind's mostly yellow, though some are dirty
white."

"Know the Dark Islands?"

"At a distance.  I never landed there.  I was only a trader then."

"And these men you'd like to see strung up like Haman, only more so,
Captain Cathie?"

"You know them as well as I do, sir.  Kidnappers, black-birders,
treacherous devils, scum of the earth.  They don't have the times they
used to have, but they're not wholly cleared out yet in the outlying
groups.  I'll be glad to give what time's left me to helping clear
them."

"You're up to steam?"

"Had five years of it."

"Any hand with a Long Tom?"

"Was gunner's mate for three years on the _Blenheim_ before I got
married, and we always carried guns in the Islands," and the bold blue
eyes snapped with a touch of puzzlement.  "But--I thought it was a
missionary cruise you were bound on, Mr. Blair?"

"I'm a new kind of missionary, Captain Cathie.  The faithful shepherd
protects his flock.  If the wolves try to steal his lambs, the wolves
must take the consequences."

"By God, sir, I'm your man!" and the burly one jumped up with a flame
in his face, because he could not sit still under the hopes that were
in him.

"I'm inclined to think you may be," said Blair.  "You will understand,
Captain Cathie, that the master of our ship will be one of the most
important links in the chain.  If you will look in about this time
to-morrow, you shall hear what we have decided."

"Right, sir!  I'll be here."  He turned back when he had reached the
door.  "If you should find some better man for captain, put me down for
chief mate, Mr. Blair; and if I'm not good enough for that, I'll go
before the mast sooner than be left out."

Blair had already decided in his own mind, but in a matter of such
immense importance he could take no possible risks.  His inquiries,
however, only confirmed the impression he had formed.  When Captain
Cathie came hopefully in, the next night, the matter was settled on the
spot, and he went away a new man, gripping with feet and hands the
rungs of a new ladder.

Blair laid his plans fully before him, and, so far as the schooner was
concerned, left him to carry them out.

Then they were back in London, and the busy days sped past, scarce long
enough for all that had to be done in them.

It was the necessary business with the Colonial Office that tried him
most severely.  The Secretary accorded him an interview, received him
with gracious warmth, listened with interest to his views, agreed that
it would be a good thing for the Dark Islands to be accorded a
protectorate until the time was ripe for formal annexation, but----
There were many buts, and they would have driven a less patient and
less determined seeker after other men's good to despair.  There was
Australia; there was France; there was Germany; there was the
Opposition; there was that loud-voiced party in the land which screamed
at any extension of the Empire's shoes.

But upon all and everything Blair quietly brought to bear his unique
personal knowledge of the conditions out there, a large common sense,
and an inflexible persistence that would admit of no rebuff or turning
aside.

The minister smilingly accused him of being one-eyed as regards the
Dark Islands.

"Absolutely!" said Blair quietly--"one-eyed, one-hearted, and
one-lived!  Body, soul, and spirit I am for the Dark Islands, and I
want to do all that man can do.  Give me the legal right and a
reasonably free hand, and, with God's help, I can do a great work out
there.  I do not think it need cost you a farthing.  I have a revenue
to start with of over £10,000 a year, and a considerable capital for
initial development purposes.  Within five years, with reasonable
success, the islands will be self-supporting.  But--I must have my
foundations sure, or I cannot build as I would."

"The matter has already been debated among us, Mr. Blair," said the
Secretary.  "The Earl of Selsea brought it up and has made it his
particular pet project.  You seem to have captured his heart, and when
he takes a matter of this kind in hand he sticks to it like a bulldog.
But you can understand that there are many collateral issues, and we
have to consider them all.  I understand exactly what you want and why,
and I promise you to do my utmost to bring it about.  It may be some
months before it can be arranged.  Meanwhile, no doubt, there is much
you can be doing to prepare the ground."

"There is much to be done, sir, and I will set to work on the strength
of what you say.  But the sooner it is definitely settled the better
for us all."

"A very fine young fellow," said the Secretary to himself, before he
turned to another quarter of the globe.  "The kind of man I could make
splendid use of if I had him to myself."

But Kenneth Blair was another Man's man.

CHAPTER IX

ARMS AND THE MAN

The _Torch_ had been brought round from Greenock by Captain Cathie, and
was lying in the London Docks close alongside Wapping Basin, an object
of interest to all her neighbours.

Captain Cathie's clock had gone back at least ten years since he and
Kenneth Blair struck hands in the drawing-room of the Aunties' house in
Brisbane Street.  He was then a fine old specimen of the very best type
of retired mariner.  Now he was a jovial young sea-dog, bristling with
energy, and overflowing with hearty goodwill to humanity at large.  He
was Kenneth Blair's man to the backbone, and prepared to follow him to
the death.

Jean delighted in him and he in her.  She had taken Aunt Jannet Harvey
down to inspect her future home, and the ladies' comments had filled
Captain Cathie's cup to the brim and won his heart completely.

Jean had asked him endless questions, but not one more than he
delighted in answering; and Aunt Jannet Harvey's characteristic
summing-up of the whole matter had been, "Child, I feel as if I'd
wasted half my life in never having been to sea before.  I've always
had an idea that I knew something about neatness and comfort and
packing, but this"--with a wave of the hand which comprehended the
cabin she was standing in, and the _Torch_ generally, and Captain
Cathie--"this puts me to shame.  I shall never want to live on shore
again," and Captain Cathie was repaid for all his labours.  With full
understanding, and thirty years' experience, and no stinting as regards
money, he had laboured to adapt the ladies' rooms to their fullest
possible requirements.  Their delight in all they saw assured him of
his success.

A few days later Blair brought down a party of friends to inspect the
little ship, foremost among them the Colonial Secretary and the Earl of
Selsea, who had both come straight from a Cabinet Council where the
Dark Islands had been the rat in the pit.

"We're getting on by degrees," said the Secretary in the train, as he
lit a cigar to counteract the atmosphere.

"It's amazing what an amount of pig-headedness there is in the world,"
said his friend.  "You don't realise it in all its heart-breaking
stolidity till you run your own head against it."

"That's so.  But what can you expect when men like B---- are
pitchforked into the positions they occupy?  I was at Eton with B----
and at Oxford.  He always was a fool and he always will be.  He ought
to have gone into the Church."

"I object!  The Church needs the very best men it can get."

"Well, then, into the Army.  He couldn't have done much mischief in
either, and in the Army, at all events, there'd have been some chance
of his getting licked into some kind of shape.  As it is, I always want
to get up and ask him to come outside into the park with me just for
ten minutes or so.  It was the one argument that used to prevail with
him, and I've an idea it would yet.  Anyway, it would do _me_ a heap of
good.  He was born pig-headed and it's grown on him ever since."

"If we can once get him to see things as----"

"See?  B---- never could see anything beyond the side on which his
bread was buttered.  Some men are born dense, and some grow denser as
they grow older.  B----'s both.  He wants trepanning.  Here's Mark
Lane, and there's your Angel Gabriel on the pounce for us."

Angel Gabriel, in the person of Kenneth Blair, gave them hearty
welcome, and piloted them through slums and dockyards till they stood
on the deck of the _Torch_, where Jean, and Aunt Jannet Harvey, and
Captain Cathie, were already doing the honours to a goodly company.

"It is a great enterprise you are bound upon, Mrs. Blair," said the
Secretary, as Jean expounded _Torch_ to him.

"The grandest work in the world," she said exuberantly.  "If you'll
only back us up and give us what we want."

"Ah! if only it rested with me.  But I'm only one."

"Oh, come!  Where am I?" asked Selsea.

"That makes two," acknowledged the Secretary, who would willingly, in
the light of Jean's brown eyes, have taken all the credit to himself.

"And we'll soon have the rest.  As for B----, if he won't toe the line,
we'll worry the life out of him," which was a highly improper remark to
fall from the lips of a philanthropic nobleman.  But then Jean Blair's
hopefully eager face and wistful eyes were upon him, and allowances
must be made.

"I do hope you will," she said earnestly.

"What, worry the life out of him?" laughed the Secretary.

"H'm--yes,--if he won't toe the line."

"Hullo!" said the Secretary, as he entered the deck saloon, an
exceedingly comfortable room, fitted in bird's-eye maple with fine
woven cane cushions and backs to the seats instead of saddlebags or
velvet plush.

But it was not at the room itself at which he exclaimed, but at the
arm-racks ranged round the walls, empty at present, but full of meaning.

"Yes," said Blair quietly.  "Winchesters.  They're down below with the
Maxim.  Let me show you something else," and he led the two gentlemen
along the deck to a longboat, keel up, on a stand well forward.  The
boat stood high and was covered with tarpaulin.

"Do you care to peep under?" he asked.  And the Secretary bent and
peeped, and straightened up again with raised eyebrows.

"You mean business, evidently, Mr. Blair.  That's an odd passenger for
a missionary ship."

"She throws a 9-lb. shell a mile and a half," said Blair, "and Captain
Cathie is an old naval gunner.  Yes, we mean business.  But this
business"--patting the long gun's cover--"only in case of absolute
necessity.  You quite understand the situation?  I hope you have
confidence in me?"

"I quite understand, and I have perfect confidence.  Mr. Blair.  I
believe for once the right man is in the right place.  We will do
everything we possibly can to further your views.  If we can't get all
we want, we can no doubt keep our eyes closed."

Their visitors were delighted with all they saw, but all of them did
not see everything.  Even if one is prepared to tackle one's problems
with an iron grip, it is not always highest wisdom to shake one's fist
in the face of the world.