beautiful things and thus shutting
out the sterner view, that they had grown heedless of the divine
message. How few of them availed themselves of their spiritual
birthright to renew their lives at the altar rail! And they had
permitted their own children to wander away.... Repent!

There was a note of desperation in his appeal, like that of the hermit
who stands on a mountain crag and warns the gay and thoughtless of the
valley of the coming avalanche. Had they heard him at last? There were a
few moments of tense silence, during which he stood gazing at them. Then
he raised his arm in benediction, gathered up his surplice, descended
the pulpit steps, and crossed swiftly the chancel....

He had, as it were, turned on all the power in a supreme effort to reach
them. What if he had failed again? Such was the misgiving that beset
him, after the service, as he got out of his surplice, communicated by
some occult telepathy.... Mr. Parr was awaiting him, and summoning his
courage, hope battling against intuition, he opened the door into the
now empty church and made his way toward the porch, where the sound of
voices warned him that several persons were lingering. The nature of
their congratulations confirmed his doubts. Mrs. Plimpton, resplendent
and looking less robust than usual in one of her summer Paris gowns,
greeted him effusively.

"Oh, Mr. Hodder, what a wonderful sermon!" she cried. "I can't express
how it made me feel--so delinquent! Of course that is exactly the effect
you wished. And I was just telling Wallis I was so glad I waited until
Tuesday to go East, or I should have missed it. You surely must come on
to Hampton and visit us, and preach it over again in our little stone
church there, by the sea. Good-by and don't forget! I'll write you,
setting the date, only we'd be glad to have you any time."

"One of the finest I ever heard--if not the finest," Mr. Plimpton
declared, with a kind of serious 'empressement', squeezing his hand.

Others stopped him; Everett Constable, for one, and the austere Mrs.
Atterbury. Hodder would have avoided the ever familiar figure of her
son, Gordon, in the invariable black cutaway and checked trousers, but
he was standing beside Mr. Parr.

"Ahem! Why, Mr. Hodder," he exclaimed, squinting off his glasses, "that
was a magnificent effort. I was saying to Mr. Parr that it isn't
often one hears a sermon nowadays as able as that, and as sound. Many
clergymen refrain from preach