the
light will strike in."

It was the nearest to optimism he had ever known his assistant to
approach.

"McCrae," he asked, "have you ever tried to do anything with Dalton
Street?"

"Dalton Street?"

The real McCrae, whom he had seemed to see emerging, retired abruptly,
presenting his former baffling and noncommittal exterior.

"Yes," Hodder forced himself to go on, and it came to him that he had
repeated virtually the same words to Mr. Parr, "it is at our very doors,
a continual reproach. There is real poverty in those rooming houses, and
I have never seen vice so defiant and shameless."

"It's a shifty place, that," McCrae replied. "They're in it one day and
gone the next, a sort of catch-basin for all the rubbish of the city.
I can recall when decent people lived there, and now it's all light
housekeeping and dives and what not."

"But that doesn't relieve us of responsibility," Hodder observed.

"I'm not denying it. I think ye'll find there's very little to get hold
of."

Once more, he had the air of stopping short, of being able to say more.
Hodder refrained from pressing him.

Dalton Street continued to haunt him. And often at nightfall, as he
hurried back to his bright rooms in the parish house from some of the
many errands that absorbed his time, he had a feeling of self-accusation
as he avoided women wearily treading the pavements, or girls and
children plodding homeward through the wet, wintry streets. Some glanced
at him with heavy eyes, others passed sullenly, with bent heads. At such
moments his sense of helplessness was overpowering. He could not follow
them to the dreary dwellings where they lodged.

Eldon Parr had said that poverty was inevitable.

Volume 2.

CHAPTER V. THE RECTOR HAS MORE FOOD FOR THOUGHT

I

Sunday after Sunday Hodder looked upon the same picture, the winter
light filtering through emblazoned windows, falling athwart stone
pillars, and staining with rich colours the marble of the centre aisle.
The organ rolled out hymns and anthems, the voices of the white robed
choir echoed among the arches. And Hodder's eye, sweeping over the
decorous congregation, grew to recognize certain landmarks: Eldon
Parr, rigid at one end of his empty pew; little Everett Constable,
comfortably, but always pompously settled at one end of his, his
white-haired and distinguished-looking wife at the other. The space
between them had once been filled by their children. There wa