nd
kindness itself. I don't think I ever met anyone so full of sympathy,
of compassion with suffering."

Juliana's face had flushed It was quite plain that she saw things in
the Reverend Uttermust Dumfarthing--as some one woman does in every
man--that no one else could see.

The Reverend Edward was abashed. "I wasn't thinking of his character,"
he said. "I was thinking rather of his doctrines. Wait till you have
heard him preach."

Juliana flushed more deeply still. "I heard him last Sunday evening,"
she said.

The rector was silent, and his sister, as if impelled to speak, went on,

"And I don't see, Edward, how anyone could think him a hard or bigoted
man in his creed. He walked home with me to the gate just now, and he
was speaking of all the sin in the world, and of how few, how very few
people, can be saved, and how many will have to be burned as worthless;
and he spoke so beautifully. He regrets it, Edward, regrets it deeply.
It is a real grief to him."

On which Juliana, half in anger, withdrew, and her brother the rector
sat back in his chair with smiles rippling all over his saintly face.
For he had been wondering whether it would be possible, even remotely
possible, to get his sister to invite the Dumfarthings to high tea at
the rectory some day at six o'clock (evening dinner was out of the
question), and now he knew within himself that the thing was as good as
done.

* * * * *

While such things as these were happening and about to happen, there
were many others of the congregation of St. Asaph's beside the rector
to whom the growing situation gave cause for serious perplexities.
Indeed, all who were interested in the church, the trustees and the
mortgagees and the underlying debenture-holders, were feeling anxious.
For some of them underlay the Sunday School, whose scholars' offerings
had declined forty per cent, and others underlay the new organ, not yet
paid for, while others were lying deeper still beneath the ground site
of the church with seven dollars and a half a square foot resting on
them.

"I don't like it," said Mr. Lucullus Fyshe to Mr. Newberry (they were
both prominent members of the congregation). "I don't like the look of
things. I took up a block of Furlong's bonds on his Guild building from
what seemed at the time the best of motives. The interest appeared
absolutely certain. Now it's a month overdue on the last quarter. I
feel alarmed."

"Neither do I lik