k, quiet and watchful, and with the
sprawling, smiling face of Brother Andrew by his side. The girls were
singing when John entered, and their voices swelled out as they saw him
pushing his way through. When the hymn ended there was silence for a
moment as if it was expected that he would speak, but he did not rise,
and the lady at the harmonium began again. Some of the young mothers from
the shelter above had brought down their little ones, and the thin,
tuneless voices could be heard among the rest:

There's a Friend for little children
Above the bright blue sky.

John had made a brave fight for it, but he was beginning to break down.
Everybody else had risen, he could not rise. An expression of fear and at
the same time of shame had come into his face. Vaguely, half-consciously,
half-reproachfully, he began to review the situation. After all, he was
deserting his post, he was running away. This was his true scene, his
true work, and if he turned his back upon it he would be pursued by
eternal regrets. And yet he must go, he must leave everything--that alone
he understood and felt.

All at once, God knows why, he began to think of something which had
happened when he was a boy. With his father he was crossing the Duddon
Sands. The tide was out, far out, but it had turned, it was galloping
toward them, and they could hear the champing waves on the beach behind.
"Run, boy, run! Give me your hand and run!"

Then he resumed the current of his former thoughts. "What was I thinking
about?" he asked himself; and when he remembered, he thought, "I will
give my hand to the heavenly Father and go on without fear." At the
second verse he rallied, rose to his feet, and joined in the singing. It
was said afterward that his deep voice rang out above all the other
voices, and that he sang in rapid and irregular time, going faster and
faster at every line.

They had reached the last verse but one, when he saw a young girl
crushing her way toward him with a letter. She was smiling, and seemed
proud to render him this service. He was about to lay the letter aside
when he glanced at it, and then he could not put it down. It was marked
"Urgent," and the address was in Glory's handwriting. The champing waves
were in his ears again. They were coming on and on.

A presentiment of evil crept over him and he opened the letter and read
it. Then his life fell to wreck in a moment. Its nullity, its
hopelessness, its futility, its fo