stions which rose in
his mind. He was about his own age, keen-featured, nervously alert, very
fashionably dressed, a type more often found on the golf links than in
church on Sunday mornings. Often, thought Imrie with a kind of shame, he
had himself preached against the "agnosticism," the "irreligion," the
"spiritual indifference," of such men. But this man's obviously profound
attention to a mere _sermon_ was a little bewildering.

From him Imrie learned that the speaker was a Jew, formerly a rabbi, who
had established a "church" in a distant city, which, though without
wealth or machinery of any sort, even to a home of its own, never had a
vacant seat, and had become a powerful factor in civic affairs.

The stranger's familiarity with the speaker's history, and his manifest
enthusiasm, were as surprising as they were significant, and as Imrie
cast his eyes around the hall, he saw many like him. It struck him
unpleasantly that men of this sort had not been numerous in his own
congregation.

After the service, moved by an impulse which he did not stop to analyse,
he made his way to the platform, introduced himself to the speaker, and
asked permission to call upon him at his hotel. It was an act very
foreign, he realised, to what he had always thought his natural reserve.
But the spirit which impelled him was as strong as it was novel.
Perhaps, he reflected, it was only necessity. He needed aid. Something
told him that Dr. Weis could give it.

The next afternoon he presented himself before the former rabbi, and
without hesitation told him everything of the quandary in which he found
himself, omitting nothing of the circumstances which had brought it
about.

Weis, a compact little man, with snapping black eyes and a combative
mouth, listened attentively, never taking his half-smiling gaze from
Imrie's face.

"The similarity is--remarkable," he said softly when the recital was
finished. Then he added crisply: "Well, young man, what do you propose
doing--next?"

"I came to ask you that question," said Imrie briefly.

The little rabbi pursed his lips thoughtfully. "So--you came to ask me.
Well, I have answered it. I moved on--yes. But it is a hard answer--oh,
quite hard."

He was silent for a moment, snapping his finger-nails one against
another. Suddenly he looked up.

"Do you wish," he demanded, "to be a preacher?" He paused and bored
Imrie with his sharp little eyes. "Do you wish to sway the multitudes
with