d it's on the cards that
you're to be made a bishop."

"Oh," answered the rector, "there are better men mentioned than I!"

"I want you to know this," said his vestryman, as he seized Hodder's
hand, "much as we value you here, bitterly as we should hate to lose
you, none of us, I am sure, would stand in the way of such a deserved
advancement."

"Thank you, Mr. Plimpton," said the rector.

Mr. Plimpton watched the vigorous form striding through the great
chamber until it disappeared. Then he seized his hat and made his way
as rapidly as possible through the crowds to the Parr Building. At the
entrance of the open-air roof garden of the Eyrie he ran into Nelson
Langmaid.

"You're the very man I'm after," said Mr. Plimpton, breathlessly. "I
stopped in your office, and they said you'd gone up."

"What's the matter, Wallis?" inquired the lawyer, tranquilly. "You look
as if you'd lost a couple of bonds."

"I've just seen Hodder, and he is going to do it."

"Do what?"

"Sit down here, at this table in the corner, and I'll tell you."

For a practical man, it must be admitted that Mr. Plimpton had very
little of the concrete to relate. And it appeared on cross-examination
by Mr. Langmaid, who ate his cold meat and salad with an exasperating
and undiminished appetite--that the only definite thing the rector had
said was that he didn't intend to preach socialism. This was reassuring.

"Reassuring!" exclaimed Mr. Plimpton, whose customary noonday hunger was
lacking, "I wish you could have heard him say it!"

"The wicked," remarked the lawyer, "flee when no man pursueth. Don't
shoot the pianist!" Langmaid set down his beer, and threw back his
head and laughed. "If I were the Reverend Mr. Hodder, after such an
exhibition as you gave, I should immediately have suspected the pianist
of something, and I should have gone off by myself and racked my brains
and tried to discover what it was. He's a clever man, and if he hasn't
got a list of Dalton Street property now he'll have one by to-morrow,
and the story of some of your transactions with Tom Beatty and the City
Council."

"I believe you'd joke in the electric chair," said Mr. a Plimpton,
resentfully. "I'll tell you this,--and my experience backs me up,--if
you can't get next to a man by a little plain talk, he isn't safe. I
haven't got the market sense for nothing, and I'll give you this tip,
Nelson,--it's time to stand from under. Didn't I warn you fellows that
Bedlo