mnity of the observing
employer--clipping the box hedge one more fraction of an inch with the
wariest caution--maintaining outwardly, in short, a most reverent
seriousness which in their secret hearts they do not feel.

Let this be so or not. The point is that Edom had gone beyond its three
churches of Calvin, Wesley and Luther--to say nothing of one poor little
frame structure with a cross at the peak, where a handful of benighted
Romanists had long been known to perform their idolatrous rites. Now,
indeed, as became a smartened village, there was a perfect little
Episcopal church of redstone, stained glass and painted shingles, with a
macadam driveway leading under its dainty _porte-cochere_, and at the
base of whose stern little tower an eager ivy already aspired; a
toy-like, yet suggestively imposing edifice, quite in the manner of
smart suburban churches--a manner that for want of accurate knowledge
one might call confectioner's gothic.

It was here, in his old home, that the Reverend Allan Delcher Linford
found his first pastorate. Here from the very beginning he rendered
apparent those gifts that were to make him a power among men. It was
with a lofty but trembling hope that the young novice began his first
service that June morning, before a congregation known to be
hypercritical, composed as it was of seasoned city communicants,
hardened listeners and watchers, who would appraise his vestments,
voice, manner, appearance, and sermon, in the light of a ripe
experience.

Yet his success was instant. He knew it long before the service
ended--felt it infallibly all at once in the midst of his sermon on
Faith. From the reading of his text, "For God so loved the world that he
gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believed therein might not
perish, but have everlasting life," the worldly people before him were
held as by invisible wires running from him to each of them. He felt
them sway in obedience to his tones; they warmed with him and cooled
with him; aspired with him, questioned, agreed, and glowed with him.
They were his--one with him. Their eyes saw a young man in the splendour
of his early prime, of a faultless, but truly masculine beauty, delicate
yet manfully rugged, square-chinned, straight-mouthed, with tawny hair
and hazel eyes full of glittering golden points when his eloquence
mounted; clear-skinned, brilliant, warm-voiced, yet always simple,
direct, earnest; a storehouse of power, yet ornate; a