scious, receptive. She read three or four
sacred verses, a throb of tender longing from the very Christ-heart,
"Come unto me ..." The words stole about the room like tears. Then she
would ask "all present," she said, to engage for a moment in silent
prayer. There was a wordless interval, only the vague street noises
surging past the door. A thrill ran along the benches as Laura brought
it to an end with sudden singing. She was on her feet as the others
raised their heads, breaking forth clear and jubilant.

"I am so wondrously saved from sin,
Jesus so sweetly abides within;
There at the Cross where he took me in,
Glory to His Name."

She smiled as she sang. It was a happy, confident smile, and it was
plain that she longed to believe it the glad reflection of spiritual
experience of many who heard her. Lindsay's perception of this was
immediate and keen, and when her eyes rested for an instant of glad
inquiry upon his in the chartered intimacy of her calling, he felt a
pang of compunction. It was a formless reproach, too vague for anything
like a charge, but it came nearest to defining itself in the idea that
he had gone too far--he who had not left his seat. When the hymn was
finished, and Ensign Sand said, "The meeting is now open for
testimonies," he knew that all her hope was upon him, though she looked
at the screen above his head, and he sat abashed, with a prodigal sense
surging through him of what he would rejoice to do for her in
compensation. In the little chilly silence that followed he surprised
his own eyes moist with disappointment--it had all been so anxious and
so vain--and he felt relief and gratitude when the man who beat the drum
stood up and announced that he had been saved for eleven years, with
details about how badly he stood in need of it when it happened.

"Hallelujah!" said Ensign Sand cheerfully, with a meretricious air of
hearing it for the first time. "Any more?" And a Norwegian sailor
lurched shamefacedly upon his feet. He had a couple of inches of
straggling yellow beard all round his face, and twirled a battered straw
hat.

"I haf to say only dis word. I goin' sdop by Jesus. Long time I subbose
I sdop by Jesus. I subbose----"

"Glory be to God!" remarked Ensign Sand again, spiking the guns of the
Duke's Own, who were inclined to be amused. "That will do, thank you.
Now, is there nobody else? Speak up, friends. It'll do you no harm, none
whatever;