are the depths, the
fearful depths into which you are being drawn? I could not shake it off.
I wished I could get away from the green, but Jack had brought me close
to the boat where the choir stood, and there was no escape. I should
have to sit it out; it would soon be over, I said to myself.

The service ended with a hymn. Another of their queer, wild, irregular
tunes, I thought; I was not going to sing it. But when Jack saw that I
did not open my book, he leant over the side of the boat, and poked my
head with his hymn-book. 'Sing, big Mr. Jack, sing,' he said aloud, and
then, for very shame, I had to find my place and begin. I can still
remember the first verse of that hymn, and I think I can recall the tune
to which they sang it:--

'Oh, tender and sweet was the Master's voice,
As he lovingly called to me:
"Come over the line! it is only a step--
I am waiting, My child, for thee!"
"Over the line!" Hear the sweet refrain!
Angels are chanting the heavenly strain!
"Over the line!" Why should I remain
With a step between me and Jesus?'

I was heartily glad when the service was over, and I went on the shore
at once, to try to walk the sermon away. But I was not so successful as
I had been the Sunday before. That question followed me; the very waves
seemed to be repeating it. What are the depths, the fearful depths, to
which you are being drawn? I had not looked at it in that light before.
I had been quite willing to own that I was not religious, that I was
leading a gay, easy-going kind of life, that my Sundays were spent in
bed, or in novel reading, or in rowing, or in some other amusement. I
was well aware that I looked at these things very differently from what
my mother had done, and I had even wondered sometimes, whether, if she
had been spared to me, I should have been a better fellow than I knew
myself to be. But as for feeling any real alarm or anxiety with regard
to my condition, such a thought had never for one moment crossed my
mind.

Yet if this man was right, there was real danger in my position. I was
not remaining stationary, as I had thought, but I was being drawn by
unseen forces towards something worse, towards the depths, the fearful
depths, of which he had spoken.

At times I wished I had never come to Runswick Bay to be made so
uncomfortable; at other times I wondered if I had been brought there on
purpose to hear those words.

I went back to dinner, b