By this time many people in the chapel were weeping, men groaned heavily, some jumped up crying 'Hallelujah!' and when the preacher ended and said, 'Now let us have silent prayer,' and came down into the aisle, and moved from pew to pew, one after another, as he spoke to them, got up, and went to the communion-rail, and knelt there, some of them with looks of great happiness. As Seaward saw the preacher coming near him, he felt a horrible fear, he did not know of what; and he rose quietly and stepped out into the night. But there, as he stood listening to some exultant voices which he still heard crying 'Hallelujah!' and as he felt the comfort of the cool air about him, and looked up at the stars and the thin white clouds which were rushing across the moon, a sense of quiet and well-being came over him, and he felt as if some bitter thing had been taken out of his soul, and he were free to love God and life at the same time, and not, as he had done till then, with alternate pangs of regret. 'If God so loved the world,' he found himself repeating; and the whole mercy of the text enveloped him. He walked home along the cliff like one in a dream: he only hoped not to waken out of that happiness. From this time, year by year, Seaward Lackland grew more eager to do some work for God. He had made few friends among the young men and women of his own age; to the women he seemed at once too cold and too earnest, and the men were not quite certain of the comradeship of one who had so much book-learning, and who was so full of strange ideas. He did not mean to be unfriendly, but he had not the qualities that go to the easy making of friendships; and he found no one, neither man nor woman, with whom he had anything in common. The men respected him, for he was a good fisherman; but the women had for the most part a certain contempt for this large-boned, dull-eyed, heavy-jawed young man, who was never at his ease when he was with them, and who waited on no occasions for meeting them when they might have liked his company. The minister at St. Ives had noticed him and asked him sometimes to come and have a talk with him in his study. One day Lackland, warmed out of his reserve, had been talking so well that the minister said to him: 'I think we must have you as a local preacher, Lackland. What do you say to it?' He said quietly: 'I would like to try, sir.' A few weeks afterwards, when the quarterly 'plan' was handed in at the Lacklands' cottage, and Mrs. Lackland had unfolded it eagerly, to see who were appointed to take the services at Carbis, she came suddenly upon a name which startled her so much, that the broad sheet of paper fluttered off her knees to the floor. 'My boy,' she said, as Seaward picked it up, and handed it back to her with a smile, 'I have been praying for this ever since I dedicated you to the Lord. Now I hardly know what there is left for me to pray for.' 'Pray that I may be steadfast in the faith, mother,' said Seaward.