iled. You have
borrowed money for the Church's present needs. When that is gone I
predict that you will find it difficult to get more."

This had every indication of being a threat, but Hodder, out of sheer
curiosity, did not interrupt. And it was evident that the banker drew a
wrong conclusion from his silence, which he may actually have taken for
reluctant acquiescence. His tone grew more assertive.

"The Church, Mr. Hodder, cannot do without the substantial business men.
I have told the bishop so, but he is failing so rapidly from old age
that I might as well not have wasted my breath. He needs an assistant, a
suffragan or coadjutor, and I intend to make it my affair to see that he
gets one. When I remember him as he was ten years ago, I find it hard to
believe that he is touched with these fancies. To be charitable, it is
senile decay. He seems to forget what I have done for him, personally,
made up his salary, paid his expenses at different times, and no appeal
for the diocese to me was ever in vain. But again, I will let that go.

"What I am getting at is this. You have made a mess of the affairs of
St. John's, you have made a mess of your life. I am willing to give you
the credit for sincerity. Some of my friends might not be. You want to
marry my daughter, and she is apparently determined to marry you. If you
are sensible and resign from St. John's now I will settle on Alison a
sufficient sum to allow you both to live in comfort and decency the
rest of your lives. I will not have it said of me that I permitted my
daughter to become destitute."

After he had finished, the rector sat for so long a time that the banker
nervously shifted in his chair. The clergyman's look had a cumulative
quality, an intensity which seemed to increase as the silence continued.
There was no anger in it, no fanaticism. On the contrary, the
higher sanity of it was disturbing; and its extraordinary
implication--gradually borne in upon Eldon Parr--was that he himself
were not in his right mind. The words, when they came, were a
confirmation of this inference.

"It is what I feared, Mr. Parr," he said. "You are as yet incapable of
comprehending."

"What do you mean?" asked the banker, jerking his hand from the table.

The rector shook his head.

"If this great chastisement with which you have been visited has given
you no hint of the true meaning of life, nothing I can say will avail.
If you will not yet listen to the Spirit whic