Jem waited till Blunt came up, and they paced along together, while Mrs. Blunt joined Cherry, and so they came to the Mission Room where Jem and Meg generally attended. Jem went in first with his little frail burden, and when he had found seats for his friends, he followed Meg to where they usually sat. When the hymn began, Dickie raised his head from Jem's breast with a light in his face. Meg was afraid he would speak, but Jem warned him by a low word, and after another moment Meg saw tear after tear come from his little sightless eyes. The first he had shed since he had been their child, she thought; and she took his little hand in hers and kissed it. But that hymn went to another heart besides Dickie's. Mrs. Blunt's husband sat as one in a dream. Where had he heard those words before?-- "There is a Fountain filled with Blood, Drawn from Immanuel's veins; And sinners plunged beneath that flood, Lose all their guilty stains." He closed his eyes, and he saw a certain bare room with a lot of little children sitting round; a teacher sat close to them, who was leading them in a clear voice, while the little ones followed and joined in as they could. "And sinners plunged beneath that flood!" The hymn rose and fell to the end; and then there was a prayer, while his mind did not follow the speaker's words, but went back to that old country Sunday School, in which he had sat week after week, month after month, and even year after year. "Lose all their guilty stains." What had the years since then brought him but guilty stains? He heard not a word of the prayer; but the first sentence that arrested his attention was, "May I not wash in _them_, and be clean?" and then he listened with an eagerness which surprised himself. He heard about the proud man turning away in a rage; he heard about his servants trying to persuade him--and mentally said that this was like his own wife; he heard how the man obeyed the prophet's words, and dipped seven times in the stream; he heard how he was cured from his loathsome disease; he heard how he went home rejoicing. And all through the preacher's words these lines kept running as a strain of sweet music-- "There is a Fountain filled with Blood, Drawn from Immanuel's veins; And sinners plunged beneath that flood, Lose all their guilty stains." Slow tears forced themselves from under his eyelids, which he hastily brushed away with his hand. What passed in the man's mind during that hour was known to none but God; perhaps he was hardly conscious himself at the time what a great transaction had taken place; but from that day forth, first very slowly and fitfully, but afterwards growing stronger and firmer, came the knowledge that he had plunged in that crimson tide, and had been washed and was clean.