t, for various reasons, come
forward. In the case of the Consolidated Tractions, for instances there
are doubtless many men like Garvin who invested their savings largely on
the strength of your name. You cannot bring him back to life, restore
him to his family as he was before you embittered him, but it would be a
comparatively easy matter to return to his widow, with compound interest,
the sum which he invested."

"For the sake of argument," said Eldon Parr, "what would you do with the
innumerable impostors who would overwhelm such a board with claims that
they had bought and sold stock at a loss? And that is only one case I
could mention."

"Would it be so dreadful a thing," asked Hodder, "To run the risk of
making a few mistakes? It would not be business, you say. If you had
the desire to do this, you would dismiss such an obsession from your
brain, you would prefer to err on the aide of justice and mercy. And no
matter how able your board, in making restitution you could at best
expect to mend only a fraction of the wrongs you have done."

"I shall waive, for the moment, my contention that the Consolidated
Tractions Company, had it succeeded, would greatly have benefited the
city. Even if it had been the iniquitous, piratical transaction you
suggest, why should I assume the responsibility for all who were
concerned in it?"

"If the grace were given you to do this, that question would answer
itself," the rector replied. "The awful sense of responsibility, which
you now lack, would overwhelm you."

"You have made me out a rascal and a charlatan," said Eldon Parr, "and I
have listened' patiently in my desire to be fair, to learn from your own
lips whether there were anything in the extraordinary philosophy you have
taken up, and which you are pleased to call Christianity. If you will
permit me to be as frank as you have been, it appears to me as sheer
nonsense and folly, and if it were put into practice the world would be
reduced at once to chaos and anarchy."

"There is no danger, I am sorry to say, of its being put into practice at
once," said Hodder, smiting sadly.

"I hope not," answered the banker, dryly. "Utopia is a dream in which
those who do the rough work of the world cannot afford to indulge. And
there is one more question. You will, no doubt, deride it as practical,
but to my mind it is very much to the point. You condemn the business
practices in which I have engaged all my life as utterly unchris