The mothers broke in upon the Ensign with like exclamations. They had a
recurrent, perfunctory sound, and passed unnoticed; but when Laura again
cried "Praise the Lord!" Lindsay found himself holding in check a hasty
impulse to leave the premises. Then she rose, and he watched with the
Duke's Own to see what she would do next. The others looked at her too,
as she stood surprisingly fair and insistent among them, Ensign Sand
with humble eyes and disapproving lips. As she began to speak the
silence widened for her words, the ship's cook stopped shuffling his
feet. "Oh come," she said, "Come and be saved!" Her voice seemed to
travel from her without effort, and to penetrate every corner and every
consciousness. There was a sudden dip in it like the fall of water, that
thrilled along the nerves. "Who am I that ask you? A poor weak woman,
ignorant, unknown. Never mind. It is not my voice but the voice in your
heart that entreats you 'Come and be saved!' You know that voice; it
speaks in the watches of the night; it began to speak when you were a
little, little child, with little joys and sorrows and little prayers
that you have forgotten now. Oh, it is a sweet voice, a tender
voice"--her own had dropped to the cooing of doves--"it is hard to
know why all the winds do not carry it, and all the leaves whisper
it! Strange, strange! But the world is full of the clamour of its own
foolishness, and the voice is lost in it, except in places where people
come to pray, as here to-night, and in those night watches. You hear
it now in the echo from my lips, 'Come and be saved.' Why must I beg of
you? Why do you not come hastening, running? Are you too wise? But when
did the wisdom of this world satisfy you about the next? Are you too
much occupied? But in the day of judgment what will you do?"--


"When you come to Jordan's flood,
How will you do? How will you do?"