on came and
went, and as the Lenten penances drew near, Scott Brenton had no way of
telling where in reality he stood; yet, day by day and week by week, he
had to step forth before his congregation and toilsomely erect a
platform of belief upon which, in the end, his feet refused to mount.
Instead, with every semblance of priestly humility, he stood aside and
assisted his hearers to clamber up ahead of him. Once there, he knew
that he could count upon their smug enjoyment of their own eminence to
make them forget to notice whether or not he took his stand beside
them.

Of course, he despised himself acutely. Of course, he had hours and
moods when he felt that he must lift up his voice and shout aloud to
all men--What? That he did not know exactly what he did believe? For,
in reality, that was all the whole pother was amounting to. What was
the use in starting the alarm, when the whole great crisis might be
merely a matter of imagination, of indigestion, even, as Doctor
Keltridge had diagnosed it? In that case, the best, the only remedy was
work.

And work Scott Brenton did. The parish was growing, month by month. The
mere detail of its executive alone was enough to tax the strength of
most men. Brenton managed it, however; he also contrived to get into
the day's work as much of pastoral visitation as he could accomplish,
without running into the adulation with which he was uncomfortably
aware he was surrounded. The evenings and a good portion of the nights
he devoted to his sermons which never had been so brilliant as now,
never so vibrant with the essential truths of personal morality, of
earnest service. Indeed, his professional life, just then, seemed
rounding itself into a never-ending circle: the harder he worked, the
more inspiring were his sermons, thus broadening and deepening his
grasp upon his hearers. And this, in turn, put new vitality into his
parish needs, and so increased his work past any computation.

It would have been no especial wonder, then, that this revolving circle
should shut him in entirely from any chance to see an old chum like
Reed Opdyke. Opdyke himself accepted the explanation. Brenton knew it
was false, and flagrantly so. He longed acutely to sit down beside his
old friend, to unburden himself to the very dregs and then to sort over
the dregs, discussing them and judging them in the light of Opdyke's
old, shrewd common sense and in the clearer light of Opdyke's new and
illuminating ex