’Strange to say, we met one day in my old attic, the very attic where my poor old master had died.  She had gone there to visit a sick woman, and as I went in she was reading to her from the very Testament out of which her mother had read to my old master, when she had come to see him in that place, fifteen years before.

’Soon after this we were married, Nellie and I, and it was your dear mother who made our little home bright and pretty for us, and who 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.’