nce familiar and unfamiliar, who had somehow lifted
himself out of the everyday element in which they heretofore had met.
The clergyman had contrived to step out of his, Langmaid's, experience:
had actually set him--who all his life had known no difficulty in
dealing with men--to groping for a medium of communication....

Hodder sat down on the other side of the fireplace. He, too, seemed to
be striving for a common footing.

"It was a question of proclaiming the truth when at last I came to see
it, Langmaid. I could not help doing what I did. Matters of policy, of
a false consideration for individuals could not enter into it. If this
were not so, I should gladly admit that you had a just grievance, a
peculiar right to demand why I had not remained the strictly orthodox
person whom you induced to come here. You had every reason to
congratulate yourself that you were getting what you doubtless would
call a safe man."

"I'll admit I had a twinge of uneasiness after I came home," Langmaid
confessed.

Hodder smiled at his frankness.

"But that disappeared."

"Yes, it disappeared. You seemed to suit 'em so perfectly. I'll own up,
Hodder, that I was a little hurt that you did not come and talk to
me just before you took the extraordinary--before you changed your
opinions."

"Would it have done any good?" asked the rector, gently. "Would you have
agreed with me any better than you do now? I am perfectly willing,
if you wish, to discuss with you any views of mine which you may not
indorse. And it would make me very happy, I assure you, if I could bring
you to look upon the matter as I do."

This was a poser. And whether it were ingenuous, or had in it an element
of the scriptural wisdom of the serpent, Langmaid could not have said.
As a lawyer, he admired it.

"I wasn't in church, as usual,--I didn't hear the sermon," he replied.
"And I never could make head or tail of theology--I always told you
that. What I deplore, Hodder, is that you've contrived to make a
hornets' nest out of the most peaceful and contented congregation in
America. Couldn't you have managed to stick to religion instead of
getting mixed up with socialism?"

"So you have been given the idea that my sermon was socialistic?" the
rector said.

"Socialistic and heretical,--it seems. Of course I'm not much of an
authority on heresy, but they claim that you went out of your way to
knock some of their most cherished and sacred beliefs in the head."