ck by Mr.
Hodder's resemblance to the cliff sculpture of which he had spoken at
the vestry meeting.

He was rough-hewn indeed, with gray-green eyes, and hair the color of
golden sand: it would not stay brushed. It was this hair that hinted
most strongly of individualism, that was by no means orthodox. Langmaid
felt an incongruity, but he was fascinated; and he had discovered on the
rector's shelves evidences of the taste for classical authors that he
himself possessed. Thus fate played with him, and the two men ranged
from Euripides to Horace, from Horace to Dante and Gibbon. And when
Hodder got up to fetch this or that edition, he seemed to tower over the
lawyer, who was a big man himself.

Then they discussed business, Langmaid describing the parish, the
people, the peculiar situation in St. John's caused by Dr. Gilman's
death, while Hodder listened. He was not talkative; he made no promises;
his reserve on occasions was even a little disconcerting; and it
appealed to the lawyer from Hodder as a man, but somehow not as a
clergyman. Nor did the rector volunteer any evidences of the soundness
of his theological or political principles.

He gave Langmaid the impression--though without apparent egotism--that
by accepting the call he would be conferring a favour on St. John's; and
this was when he spoke with real feeling of the ties that bound him to
Bremerton. Langmaid felt a certain deprecation of the fact that he was
not a communicant.

For the rest, if Mr. Hodder were disposed to take himself and his
profession seriously, he was by no means lacking in an appreciation of
Langmaid's humour....

The tempering of the lawyer's elation as he returned homeward to report
to Mr. Parr and the vestry may be best expressed by his own exclamation,
which he made to himself:

"I wonder what that fellow would do if he ever got started!" A parson
was, after all, a parson, and he had done his best.

IV

A high, oozing note of the brakes, and the heavy train came to a
stop. Hodder looked out of the window of the sleeper to read the sign
'Marcion' against the yellow brick of the station set down in the
prairie mud, and flanked by a long row of dun-colored freight cars
backed up to a factory.

The factory was flimsy, somewhat resembling a vast greenhouse with its
multitudinous windows, and bore the name of a firm whose offices were in
the city to which he was bound.

"We 'most in now, sah," the negro porter volunteered. "