all sorts; the cashier in the bank, men in the mills, the hotel
clerk, my private stenographer--he's built up that little church from
nothing at all. And you may write the Bishop, if you wish."

"How has he built up the church?" Langmaid demanded

"How? How does any clergyman buildup a church

"I don't know," Langmaid confessed. "It strikes me as quite a tour de
force in these days. Does he manage to arouse enthusiasm for orthodox
Christianity?"

"Well," said Gerard Whitely, "I think the service appeals. We've made it
as beautiful as possible. And then Mr. Hodder goes to see these people
and sits up with them, and they tell him their troubles. He's reformed
one or two rather bad cases. I suppose it's the man's personality."

Ah! Langmaid exclaimed, "now you're talking!"

"I can't see what you're driving at," confessed his brother-in-law.
"You're too deep for me, Nelson."

If the truth be told, Langmaid himself did not quits see. On behalf
of the vestry, he offered next day to Mr. Hodder the rectorship of St.
John's and that offer was taken under consideration; but there was in
the lawyer's mind no doubt of the acceptance, which, in the course of
a fortnight after he had returned to the West, followed.

By no means a negligible element in Nelson Langmaid's professional
success had been his possession of what may called a sixth sense, and
more than once, on his missions of trust, he had listened to its
admonitory promptings.

At times he thought he recognized these in his conversation with the
Reverend John Hodder at Bremerton,--especially in that last interview in
the pleasant little study of the rectory overlooking Bremerton Lake. But
the promptings were faint, and Langmaid out of his medium. He was not
choosing the head of a trust company.

He himself felt the pull of the young clergyman's personality, and
instinctively strove to resist it: and was more than ever struck by Mr.
Hodder's resemblance to the cliff sculpture of which he had spoken at the
vestry meeting.

He was rough-hewn indeed, with gray-green eyes, and hair the color of
golden sand: it would not stay brushed. It was this hair that hinted
most strongly of individualism, that was by no means orthodox. Langmaid
felt an incongruity, but he was fascinated; and he had discovered on the
rector's shelves evidences of the taste for classical authors that he
himself possessed. Thus fate played with him, and the two men ranged
from Euripides to Horace,