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, but I could not enjoy it, much to Polly's
distress. The rain fell fast all the afternoon, and as I lay on my bed
upstairs I heard Polly washing up, and singing as she did so the hymn we
had had at the service--

'Come over the line to Me.'


There seemed no chance of forgetting the words which had made me so
uneasy.

That night I had a strange dream. I thought I was once more on the