A day and a night have I been in the deep, like the man in the good book; and bed is the best of medicine for a ducking;' and the colonel shook him kindly by the hand and disappeared.
Lancelot sat down by the keeper's bed.
'You'll get those fish-hooks into your trousers, sir; and this is a poor place to sit down in.' 'I want you to say your say out, friend, fish-hooks or none.' The keeper looked warily at the door, and when the colonel had passed the window, balancing the trolling-rod on his chin, and whistling merrily, he began,-- '"A day and a night have I been in the deep!"-- and brought back no more from it! And yet the Psalms say how they that go down to the sea in ships see the works of the Lord!--If the Lord has opened their eyes to see them, that must mean--' Lancelot waited.
'What a gallant gentleman that is, and a valiant man of war, I'll warrant,--and to have seen all the wonders he has, and yet to be wasting his span of life like that!' Lancelot's heart smote him.
'One would think, sir,--You'll pardon me for speaking out.' And the noble face worked, as he murmured to himself, 'When ye are brought before kings and princes for my name's sake .-- I dare not hold my tongue, sir.

I am as one risen from the dead,'-- and his face flashed up into sudden enthusiasm--'and woe to me if I speak not.

Oh, why, why are you gentlemen running off to Norway, and foreign parts, whither God has not called you! Are there no graves in Egypt, that you must go out to die in the wilderness!' Lancelot, quite unaccustomed to the language of the Dissenting poor, felt keenly the bad taste of the allusion.
'What can you mean ?' he asked.
'Pardon me, sir, if I cannot speak plainly; but are there not temptations enough here in England that you must go to waste all your gifts, your scholarship, and your rank, far away there out of the sound of a church-going bell?
I don't deny it's a great temptation.

I have read of Norway wonders in a book of one Miss Martineau, with a strange name.' 'Feats on the Fiord ?' 'That's it, sir.

Her books are grand books to set one a-thinking; but she don't seem to see the Lord in all things, does she, sir ?' Lancelot parried the question.
'You are wandering a little from the point.' 'So I am, and thank you for the rebuke.