O lonely space! awful indeed
wert thou, did no one love us! But he had yet to receive one more vision
of the waters, and that was to be in a dream. With this dream I will close
the story of his holiday; for it went with him ever after, breaking forth
from the dream-home, and encompassing his waking thoughts with an
atmosphere of courage and hope, when his heart was ready to sink in a
world which was not the world the boy had thought to enter, when he ran to
welcome his fate.
"On their last Sunday, Herbert went with his mother to the evening service
in a little chapel in the midst of the fishermen's cottages. It was a
curious little place, with galleries round, that nearly met in the middle,
and a high pulpit with a great sounding-board over it, from which came the
voice of an earnest little Methodist, magnified by his position into a
mighty prophet. The good man was preaching on the parable of _the sheep
and the goats;_ and, in his earnestness for his own theology and the souls
of his hearers, was not content that the Lord should say these things in
his own way, but he must say them in his too.
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