rked the entrance of the library. He, Nelson
Langmaid,--had gone forth from that school resolved to follow in the
footsteps of that man,--but somehow he missed the path. Somehow
the jewel had lost its fire. There had come a tempting offer, and
a struggle--just one: a readjustment on the plea that the world had
changed since the days of Judge Goodrich, whose uncompromising figure
had begun to fade: an exciting discovery that he, Nelson Langmaid,
possessed the gift of drawing up agreements which had the faculty of
passing magically through the meshes of the Statutes. Affluence had
followed, and fame, and even that high office which the Judge himself
had held, the Presidency of the State Bar Association. In all that time,
one remark, which he had tried to forget, had cut him to the quick.
Bedloe Hubbell had said on the political platform that Langmaid got one
hundred thousand dollars a year for keeping Eldon Parr out of jail.

Once he stopped in the street, his mind suddenly going back to the
action of the financier at the vestry meeting.

"Confound him!" he said aloud, "he has been a fool for once. I told him
not to do it."

He stood at last in the ample vestibule of his house, singling out
his latch-key, when suddenly the door opened, and his daughter Helen
appeared.

"Oh, dad," she cried, "why are you so-late? I've been watching for you.
I know you've let Mr. Hodder stay."

She gazed at him with widened eyes.

"Don't tell me that you've made him resign. I can't--I won't believe
it."

"He isn't going to resign, Helen," Langmaid replied, in an odd voice.

"He--he refused to."

CHAPTER XXV. "RISE, CROWNED WITH LIGHT!"

I

The Church of St. John's, after a peaceful existence of so many years,
had suddenly become the stage on which rapid and bewildering dramas were
played: the storm-centre of chaotic forces, hitherto unperceived, drawn
from the atmosphere around her. For there had been more publicity, more
advertising. "The Rector of St. John's will not talk"--such had been
one headline: neither would the vestry talk. And yet, despite all this
secrecy, the whole story of the suspension of Hodder's salary was in
print, and an editorial (which was sent to him) from a popular and
sensational journal, on "tainted money," in which Hodder was held up to
the public as a martyr because he refused any longer to accept for the
Church ill-gotten gains from Consolidated Tractions and the like.

This had opened ag