gns of
belief in Christ. As we did long marches my feet suffered badly.'

In a private letter written at this time he enters a little more fully
into what he had to endure.

'I had a good time in Mongolia, but oh! so cold. Some of the days I
spent in the markets were so very cold that my muscles seemed
benumbed, and speech even was difficult. I met with some spiritual
response, though, and with that I can stand cold. Eh! man, I have
got thin. I am feeding up at present. I left my medicines, books,
&c., there, and walked home here, a donkey carrying my baggage, a
distance of about three hundred miles, in seven and a half days, or
about forty miles a day, and my feet were really very bad.

'At night I used to draw a woollen thread through the blisters. In
the morning I "hirpled" a little, but it was soon all right. I
walked, not because I had not money to ride, but to get at the
Mongol who was with me.'

These graphic pictures enable us to realise how Mr. Gilmour began the
last great missionary enterprise of his life. He returned to Peking, and
then had to pass through that severe trial which comes to almost all
missionaries in the foreign field, which is often one of their heaviest
crosses. His two eldest boys were sent home for education. They sailed
from Tientsin March 23, 1886, the diary for that day containing the
brief but significant reference: 'At 6.45 A.M. came all the friends once
more, at 7.30 cast off, and the vessel slowly fell out into the middle
of the river. Oh! the parting!' But at 8.30 on the same morning the
sorrowful father had started on his solitary return journey to Peking.
Bereft now of both wife, and boys he was to pass the rest of his career
in China, except for the brief intervals of residence in Peking, in the
cheerless, noisy, uncongenial quarters of an ordinary Chinese inn. The
return of the Rev. S. E. Meech in April 1886 set him entirely free from
mission work in the capital. He had already acquired the needful
experience of his new field of labour, and on April 22, 1886, he started
anew for Eastern Mongolia. It is neither necessary nor desirable to
enter into any very detailed description of the next three years. In
many respects day after day was occupied with the round of ever
recurring and similar duties, but it is desirable to enter, if we can,
with some minuteness into his inner life, and to lay bare the spiritual
sou