You kin see the
smoke yondah."

Hodder's mood found a figure in this portentous sign whereby the city's
presence was betrayed to travellers from afar,--the huge pall seemed an
emblem of the weight of the city's sorrows; or again, a cloud of her own
making which shut her in from the sight of heaven. Absorbed in the mad
contest for life, for money and pleasure and power she felt no need to
lift her eyes beyond the level of her material endeavours.

He, John Hodder, was to live under that cloud, to labour under it. The
mission on which he was bound, like the prophets of old, was somehow to
gain the ears of this self-absorbed population, to strike the fear of
the eternal into their souls, to convince them that there was Something
above and beyond that smoke which they ignored to their own peril.

Yet the task, at this nearer view, took on proportions overwhelming--so
dense was that curtain at which he gazed. And to-day the very skies
above it were leaden, as though Nature herself had turned atheist. In
spite of the vigour with which he was endowed, in spite of the belief
in his own soul, doubts assailed him of his ability to cope with this
problem of the modern Nineveh--at the very moment when he was about to
realize his matured ambition of a great city parish.

Leaning back on the cushioned seat, as the train started again, he
reviewed the years at Bremerton, his first and only parish. Hitherto (to
his surprise, since he had been prepared for trials) he had found the
religious life a primrose path. Clouds had indeed rested on Bremerton's
crests, but beneficent clouds, always scattered by the sun. And there,
amid the dazzling snows, he had on occasions walked with God.

His success, modest though it were, had been too simple. He had
loved the people, and they him, and the pang of homesickness he now
experienced was the intensest sorrow he had known since he had been
among them. Yes, Bremerton had been for him (he realized now that he had
left it) as near an approach to Arcadia as this life permits, and the
very mountains by which it was encircled had seemed effectively to shut
out those monster problems which had set the modern world outside to
seething. Gerald Whitely's thousand operatives had never struck; the
New York newspapers, the magazines that discussed with vivid animus
the corporation-political problems in other states, had found Bremerton
interested, but unmoved; and Mrs. Whitely, who was a trustee of the
li