and by citizens hanging on the straps of the very cars that were to be
consolidated--golden word! Very little appeared about Nelson Langmaid,
who was philosophically content. But to Mr. Parr, who was known to
dislike publicity, were devoted pages in the Sunday newspapers, with
photographs of the imposing front of his house in Park Street, his altar
and window in St. John's, the Parr building, and even of his private
car, Antonia.

Later on, another kind of publicity, had come. The wind had whistled
for a time, but it turned out to be only a squall. The Consolidated
Tractions Company had made the voyage for which she had been
constructed, and thus had fulfilled her usefulness; and the cleverest
of the rats who had mistaken her for a permanent home scurried ashore
before she was broken up.

All of which is merely in the nature of a commentary on Mr. Langmaid's
genius. His reputation for judgment--which by some is deemed the highest
of human qualities--was impaired; and a man who in his time had selected
presidents of banks and trust companies could certainly be trusted to
choose a parson--particularly if the chief requirements were not of a
spiritual nature...

A week later he boarded an east-bound limited train, armed with plenary
powers.

His destination was the hill town where he had spent the first fifteen
years of his life, amid the most striking of New England landscapes, and
the sight of the steep yet delicately pastoral slopes never failed to
thrill him as the train toiled up the wide valley to Bremerton. The
vision of these had remained with him during the years of his toil in
the growing Western city, and embodied from the first homesick days an
ideal to which he hoped sometime permanently to return. But he never
had. His family had shown a perversity of taste in preferring the sea,
and he had perforce been content with a visit of a month or so every
other summer, accompanied usually by his daughter, Helen. On such
occasions, he stayed with his sister, Mrs. Whitely.

The Whitely mills were significant of the new Bremerton, now neither
village nor city, but partaking of the characteristics of both. French
Canadian might be heard on the main square as well as Yankee; and that
revolutionary vehicle, the automobile, had inspired there a great brick
edifice with a banner called the Bremerton House. Enterprising Italians
had monopolized the corners with fruit stores, and plate glass and
asphalt were in evidenc