was
there to welcome us to it. How we loved her then, how we love her still!

'When you were quite a tiny child, she would bring you to see us, and
Nellie used often to say you were the dearest, prettiest child she had
ever known!'

'I don't remember it,' I said.

'No, you would be too young to remember it; you were only three years
old when your father left London for a parish in the country, and soon
after came the news of his death, and only a year or so later we heard
your mother was gone too. It was a sorrowful day, Jack, when that news
came.

'We often wondered about you; we heard that you had gone to live with an
aunt, but we did not even know her name. We tried to find out more, but
we knew no one in the place where you lived, and we never heard what had
become of you.'

'How strange that I should have been brought here to meet you!' I said.

'No, not strange,' he said reverently; 'it is the hand of God.'

And then--I could not help it--I laid my head on my arm as I stood
against the mantel-piece, and I sobbed like a child.

He did not speak for some minutes, and then he put his arm round me as
tenderly as my mother could have done, and said, 'What is it, Jack? Is
it talking of your mother that has upset you so?'

'No,' I said, 'it isn't that--I love to talk of her; I love to hear of
her; everything she said is precious to me; it isn't that.'

'What then?' he said; 'what troubles you, Jack?'

'It's the thought that I shall never see her again,' I said; 'I know I
shall not. _She_ went one way and _I_ am going another.'

'Why not turn round and go her way, Jack?' he said cheerily.

'Oh, I can't,' I said; 'it's no use--I can't turn. There are too many
hands on the wrong end of the rope. I've been miserable ever since I
heard you talk of it. I could not sleep last night for thinking of it.
"What are the depths, the fearful depths, to which you are being drawn?"
those words have never left me, night or day, since you uttered them. I
have tried to shake them off, but I can't.'

'Don't attempt to shake them off,' he said. 'Oh, Jack, don't try to do
it, for they are the voice of the Spirit of God. But listen to-night to
the One who is calling you. "Come over the line--it is only a step. Come
over the line to _Me_."'

'I wish I could,' I said.

'You can do it, and you _must_ do it, Jack,' he said firmly,
'before you leave this room.'

'Before I leave this room?'

'Yes, this very instant,' he said.