“‘To be saved!’ I said to myself, ‘to be saved!’
“Then the thoughts of all the things implied in salvation came in one thought upon me; and I said:
“‘This is the one grand joy of life;’ and I clapped my hands like a child, and spoke to God aloud. But then there came many thoughts, all in one thought, about the nature and manner of our salvation. To be saved with such a salvation!
“This was a grander joy, the second grand joy of life; and I tried to say some lines of a hymn but the words were choked in my throat. The ebb was sucking the sea down over the sand quite silently; and the cliffs were whiter, and more day-like. Then there came many more thoughts all in one thought, and I stood still without intending it.
“To be saved by such a Saviour! This was the grandest joy of all, the third grand joy of life; and it swallowed up the other joys; and after it there could be on earth no higher joy.
“I said nothing; but I looked at the sinking sea as it reddened in the morning. Its great heart was throbbing in the calm; and methought I saw the precious blood of Jesus in heaven, throbbing that hour with real human love of me.”
“Yes,” murmured Tom Hammond, “after all, to be saved by such a Saviour is a greater, higher, holier thought than the mere knowledge that one is saved, or of the realization of what that salvation comprises.”
In every way that night was one never to be forgotten by Tom Hammond. He needed, too, all the strength born of his new communion with God to meet what awaited him with the coming of the new day’s daily papers.
The paper whom whose staff he had been practically dismissed in our first chapter (the editor of which was his bitterest enemy) had found how to use “the glass stiletto.”