He did not speak again until we reached the hotel, and then he simply said, ’Good-night, Jack, I’m sorry you’ve gone and made such a fool of yourself’; and I went down the hill, feeling as if I had lost my friend, and as if the old days and old companionship were dead and buried for ever.

But if I had lost one friend, I felt I had gained another.  Mr. Christie was waiting for me at the bottom of the hill, and he proposed that we should take a turn together on the shore.  Nellie was expecting me to supper, he said; he had told Duncan I was going there, and the moon was coming out, and a good stretch on the sands would make us enjoy it all the more.

We had walked across the bay, and were standing gazing out seawards, when he suddenly put his arm in mine.

‘What is it, Jack?’ he said kindly, ’something is troubling you this evening.’

‘Yes, you are right,’ I said.  ’However did you know, Mr. Christie?  I am bothered a bit; the fact is, I’m ashamed of myself, I’ve been such a coward.’

‘What have you been doing, Jack?  You don’t mind telling me, do you?’

‘Not at all, Mr. Christie, I would rather tell you,’ I said; and then I gave him an account of the last week, of my fear of Tom, and how very nearly—­I was ashamed to say it—­I had yielded to him about the outing to-morrow.  Then I spoke of my friend, and I told him I was afraid I had lost him through my plain speaking.

‘Never mind, Jack,’ he said, ’the Master must come first, and it does happen very often that when He is put in His right place we have to give up a great deal.  He knew we should have to do it, and He spoke some very plain words about it:  “He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me, and he that loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.”  You would like to be worthy of Him, Jack?’

‘I shall never be that, Mr. Christie,’ I said.

‘No,’ he said; ’you are right, we are all unworthy of Him; but when we love Him, we do long to do that which is pleasing in His sight.  And, remember, there is always the hundredfold, Jack, always the Master’s reward for anything we give up for Him.’

‘Yes, in heaven,’ I said softly.

’No, Jack, not in heaven, but on earth.  Do you remember how the Master’s words run:  “He shall receive an hundredfold now, in this time, and in the world to come, life everlasting.”  The hundredfold is to be enjoyed here, the everlasting life there.’

‘I never noticed that before,’ I said.

’I have proved it true, Jack, abundantly true.  I sometimes think I have got beyond the hundredfold.  And then beyond, there lies the life eternal.’

‘My mother is enjoying that,’ I said.

‘Yes, indeed,’ he answered; ’and her boy will enjoy it too in God’s good time, for does not the Master say of all those who belong to Him, “I give unto them eternal life?” “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly"?’