k,
intensely interested, and so is Mrs. Plimpton. She'll help you. I'm
sorry you can't lunch with me."

He had the air, now, of the man who finds himself disagreeably and
unexpectedly closeted with a lunatic; and his language, although he
sought to control it, became even a trifle less coherent.

"You must make allowances for us business men, Mr. Hodder. I mean, of
course, we're sometimes a little lax in our duties--in the summer, that
is. Don't shoot the pianist, he's doing his--ahem! You know the story.

"By the way, I hear great things of you; I'm told it's on the cards that
you're to be made a bishop."

"Oh," answered the rector, "there are better men mentioned than I!"

"I want you to know this," said his vestryman, as he seized Hodder's
hand, "much as we value you here, bitterly as we should hate to lose you,
none of us, I am sure, would stand in the way of such a deserved
advancement."

"Thank you, Mr. Plimpton," said the rector.

Mr. Plimpton watched the vigorous form striding through the great chamber
until it disappeared. Then he seized his hat and made his way as rapidly
as possible through the crowds to the Parr Building. At the entrance of
the open-air roof garden of the Eyrie he ran into Nelson Langmaid.

"You're the very man I'm after," said Mr. Plimpton, breathlessly.
"I stopped in your office, and they said you'd gone up."

"What's the matter, Wallis?" inquired the lawyer, tranquilly. "You look
as if you'd lost a couple of bonds."

I've just seen Hodder, and he is going to do it."

"Do what?"

"Sit down here, at this table in the corner, and I'll tell you."

For a practical man, it must be admitted that Mr. Plimpton had very
little of the concrete to relate. And it appeared on cross-examination
by Mr. Langmaid, who ate his cold meat and salad with an exasperating and
undiminished appetite--that the only definite thing the rector had said
was that he didn't intend to preach socialism. This was reassuring.

"Reassuring!" exclaimed Mr. Plimpton, whose customary noonday hunger was
lacking, "I wish you could have heard him say it!"

"The wicked," remarked the lawyer, "flee when no man pursueth. Don't
shoot the pianist!" Langmaid set down his beer, and threw back his head
and laughed. "If I were the Reverend Mr. Hodder, after such an
exhibition as you gave, I should immediately have suspected the pianist
of something, and I should have gone off by myself and racked my brains
and tried to dis