'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.' 'Before I leave this room?' 'Yes, this very instant,' he said. 'But how can I do it? I don't know how to cross,' I said. 'You are no dead, lifeless weight on the rope, like a boat or a handkerchief; you have a will of your own, and it remains with you to decide which way you want to be drawn, God-ward, Christ-ward, heaven-ward, or to the fearful depths of which I spoke. God is drawing you very strongly now, but He never forces a man against his will. He puts in your hands the power to decide on which side of the line you will be. Which is it to be, Jack?' 'Well,' I said, 'I will think it over.'