e desk) I demand that you be
specific. I am a busy man, I have little time to waste, I have certain
matters--before me which must be attended to to-night. I warn you that
I will not listen any longer to vague accusations."

It was Holder's turn to marvel. Did Eldon Purr, after all; have no sense
of guilt? Instantaneously, automatically, his own anger rose.

"You may be sure, Mr. Parr, that I should not be here unless I were
prepared to be specific. And what I am going to say to you I have
reserved for your ear alone, in the hope that you will take it to heart,
while it is not yet too late, said amend your life accordingly."

Eldon Parr shifted slightly. His look became inscrutable, was riveted on
the rector.

"I shall call your attention first to a man of whom you have probably
never heard. He is dead now--he threw himself into the river this
summer, with a curse on his lips--I am afraid--a curse against you. A
few years ago he lived happily with his wife and child in a little house
on the Grade Suburban, and he had several thousand dollars as a result of
careful saving and systematic self-denial.

"Perhaps you have never thought of the responsibilities of a great name.
This man, like thousands of others in the city, idealized you. He looked
up to you as the soul of honour, as a self-made man who by his own
unaided efforts--as you yourself have just pointed out--rose from a poor
boy to a position of power and trust in the community. He saw you a
prominent layman in the Church of God. He was dazzled by the brilliancy
of your success, inspired by a civilization which--gave such
opportunities. He recognized that he himself had not the brains for such
an achievement,--his hope and love and ambition were centred in his boy."

At the word Eldon Parr's glance was suddenly dulled by pain. He
tightened his lips.

"That boy was then of a happy, merry disposition, so the mother says, and
every summer night as she cooked supper she used to hear him laughing as
he romped in the yard with his father. When I first saw him this summer,
it was two days before his father committed suicide. The child was
lying, stifled with the heat, in the back room of one of those desolate
lodging houses in Dalton Street, and his little body had almost wasted
away.

"While I was there the father came in, and when he saw me he was filled
with fury. He despised the Church, and St. John's above all churches,
because you were of it; because you who