to the preacher for you, Walter? It
will save you some pain, and, as I shall be speaking for another, I
should not have the same difficulty that you might feel." But this
suggestion at once roused Walter out of all his fears. "No, no, dear
Amos," he cried, "no; I have put my foot in it, and I must go through
with it. Your being with me will be a great help, and it would not be
right for me to accept any further assistance from you."

Little more was said on the way. Julia scarcely opened her lips, but
there was a sweet peace on her fair face. She felt that her brother
Walter was going to do the right thing, and, though she thoroughly
sympathised with him in his natural shrinking from his task, she was
satisfied that he could not now retreat if he would do what duty plainly
called him to. So they trotted or cantered leisurely along, while the
dashing of the waves, and their ceaseless ebb and flow, seemed to remind
them of that love which, in the midst of the ceaseless ebb and flow of
this world's trials, and of man's personal failures and advances in the
life of holiness, ever comes, like the sea-breeze, in breathings of
spiritual health and heavenly pity to the souls that are pressing onward
and upward to the land unclouded by sin.

At last the watering-place was gained. It seemed to Walter and his
sister more thronged than ever. Several large excursion trains had
brought their many hundreds of eager and excited holiday-keepers.
Esplanade, sands, and by-streets were swarming with passers to and fro.
Would they meet Gregson and Saunders there? Most earnestly did Walter
and his sister, and indeed Amos also, hope that they would not.
However, little time was there for scanning the faces of those they met,
for now they pressed rapidly forward, Walter leading the way, as he was
anxious to plunge at once into his difficult work and get it over as
speedily as possible. "You know," he said to Amos with a faint smile,
"it's just like going to the dentist's. When you get into his room, you
don't go and ask to look at his instruments,--those horrid pinchers, and
pliers, and screw-looking things,--it's quite bad enough to feel them;
and the sooner the wrench comes the sooner it'll be over. So now for my
wrench." As he said this, they came within sight of the place where the
unhappy disturbance occurred in which he had taken a part. A crowd had
gathered, on the outskirts of which, people were moving backwards and
fo