icent ideal, but how was it to be carried on
without an Eldon Parr, a Ferguson, a Constable, a Mrs. Larrabbee, or a
Gore who would make up the deficit at the end of the year? Could weekly
contributions, on the envelope system, be relied upon, provided the
people continued to come and fill the pews of absent and outraged
parishioners? The music was the most expensive in the city, although
Mr. Taylor, the organist, had come to the rector and offered to cut his
salary in half, and to leave that in abeyance until the finances could be
adjusted. And his example had been followed by some of the high-paid men
in the choir. Others had offered to sing without pay. And there were
the expenses of the parish house, an alarming sum now Eldon Parr had
withdrawn: the salaries of the assistants. Hodder, who had saved a
certain sum in past years, would take nothing for the present . . . .
Asa Waring and Phil Goodrich borrowed on their own responsibility . . .

II

Something of the overwhelming nature of the forces Hodder had summoned
was visibly apparent on that first Sunday after what many had called his
apostasy. Instead of the orderly, sprucely-dressed groups of people
which were wont to linger in greetings before the doors of St. John's,
a motley crowd thronged the pavement and streamed into the church,
pressing up the aisles and invading the sacred precincts where decorous
parishioners had for so many years knelt in comfort and seclusion.
The familiar figure of Gordon Atterbury was nowhere to be seen, and the
Atterbury pew was occupied by shop-girls in gaudy hats. Eldon Parr's pew
was filled, Everett Constable's, Wallis Plimpton's; and the ushers who
had hastily been mustered were awestricken and powerless. Such a
resistless invasion by the hordes of the unknown might well have struck
with terror some of those who hitherto had had the courage to standup
loyally in the rector's support. It had a distinct flavour of
revolution: contained, for some, a grim suggestion of a time when that
vague, irresponsible, and restless monster, the mob, would rise in its
might and brutally and inexorably take possession of all property.

Alison had met Eleanor Goodrich in Burton Street, and as the two made
their way into the crowded vestibule they encountered Martha Preston,
whose husband was Alison's cousin, in the act of flight.

"You're not going in!" she exclaimed.

"Of course we are."

Mrs. Preston stared at Alison in amazement.

"I