en," he said coldly, and without more ado went to
his customary chair, and sat down in it. Immediately followed a scraping
of other chairs. There was a dominating quality about the man not to be
gainsaid.

The rector called the meeting to order . . . .

During the routine business none of the little asides occurred which
produce laughter. Every man in the room was aware of the intensity of
Eldon Parr's animosity, and yet he betrayed it neither by voice, look,
or gesture. There was something uncanny in this self-control, this sang
froid with which he was wont to sit at boards waiting unmoved for the
time when he should draw his net about his enemies, and strangle them
without pity. It got on Langmaid's nerves--hardened as he was to it.
He had seen many men in that net; some had struggled, some had taken
their annihilation stoically; honest merchants, freebooters, and
brigands. Most of them had gone out, with their families, into that
precarious border-land of existence in which the to-morrows are ever
dreaded.

Yet here, somehow, was a different case. Langmaid found himself going
back to the days when his mother had taken him to church, and he could
not bear to look at, Hodder. Since six o'clock that afternoon--had his
companions but known it--he had passed through one of the worst periods
of his existence. . . .

After the regular business had been disposed of a brief interval was
allowed, for the sake of decency, to ensue. That Eldon Parr would not
lead the charge in person was a foregone conclusion. Whom, then, would
he put forward? For obvious reasons, not Wallis Plimpton or Langmaid,
nor Francis Ferguson. Hodder found his, glance unconsciously fixed upon
Everett Constable, who, moved nervously and slowly pushed back his chair.
He was called upon, in this hour and in the church his father had helped
to found, to make the supreme payment for the years of financial
prosperity. Although a little man, with his shoulders thrown back and
his head high, he generally looked impressive when he spoke, and his fine
features and clear-cut English contributed to the effect. But now his
face was strained, and his voice seemed to lack command as he bowed and
mentioned the rector's name. Eldon Parr sat back.

"Gentlemen," Mr. Constable began, "I feel it my duty to say something
this evening, something that distresses me. Like some of you who are
here present, I have been on this vestry for many years, and my father
was on it b