"Well, Duncan, did it pay?"
"I can't tell, sir," replied Duncan lightly. "We haven't reckoned up the accounts yet."
"Just so! Perhaps you'll find it a little troublesome getting in all the loss and gain, eh?"
Duncan was disturbed and annoyed. "What a fuss people do make about a small matter," he said, talking to the pavement now, for Mr. Earle had not lingered for any further conversation.
And when the next Sabbath evening, the pastor took for his text the old and awfully solemn words—
"What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"
He recalled Mr. Earle's suggestion of a difficult reckoning; and, listening to the fearful truths presented, the conviction came over him that, after all, it was hardly worth the while to risk the loss of the Saviour's friendship for miserable and unsatisfying worldly pleasures.
Duncan McNair might have appropriated the words of the Psalmist,—
"As for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped."
But the loving Saviour with pitying eye was watching for the wanderer's return; not only watching, but calling.