ly
decided, upon the suggestion of Mr. Campbell, that Mr. Podgers should
write the clergyman a note.

Mr. Podgers honestly intended his note to be a sort of premonitory
reprimand. But his life had unfitted him for delicate intimations. The
words which left him as carefully wrought subtleties reached Imrie, in
some occult fashion, as bald commands. The answer was made accordingly.
Its effect, of course, was to remove any lingering tolerance on the part
of the vestry, and his second resignation was solemnly accepted. The
young man was called in, after the decision, in order to hear their
"deep regret" that he was "going to leave them." He listened patiently
to their assurances of admiration, shook hands punctiliously with each
one, handed over all his accounts and plans, and went back to his room
to think about it.

He was not sorry that the break had come. It had been inevitable, he
realised, from the moment that Judith's contempt had driven him to put
himself to the test. To prove her wrong he had proven himself wrong, and
his whole life was upset thereby. The smoothly running engine had
stopped short. But characteristically he put all thought of its previous
smooth running out of his mind and devoted himself to a consideration of
its present inaction.

At this crisis he felt neither need nor desire for friends. None, he
realised clearly, could possibly understand or assist. He did not yet
entirely understand himself. But he knew that whether he wanted friends
or not, he could not well avoid them. The more candid would upbraid him
and attempt conciliation: the more tactful would be sympathetic. Both he
dreaded. So, after a day of meditation, in which his thoughts merely
moved in a circle, he put a few essentials into a bag, stored the rest
of his belongings, and disappeared, with a rod and a gun, into the north
woods.

There, while his memory in St. Viateur's grew more vague and less
fragrant, in contrast to the ductile genius of his successor, and with
only an Indian guide for company, he spread out the map of his soul and
planned his campaign.

The first possibility was the most obvious. But it was the least
attractive. To be true to what he now conceived to be his real self
would involve merely a repetition of his experience at St. Viateur's. He
was young and comparatively inexperienced, and it never occurred to him
that all churches were not alike. The result would be one living after
another, all in a consta