ry, and
he's never done or said anything radical yet," replied the mill owner of
Bremerton. "If you don't want him, we'd be delighted to have him stay.
We're not forcing him on you, you know. What the deuce has got into you?
You've talked to him for two hours, and you've sat looking at him at the
dinner table for another two. I thought you were a judge of men."

Nelson Langmaid sat silent.

"I'm only urging Hodder to go for his own good," Mr. Whitely continued.
"I can take you to dozens of people to-morrow morning who worship
him,--people of all sorts; the cashier in the bank, men in the mills,
the hotel clerk, my private stenographer--he's built up that little
church from nothing at all. And you may write the Bishop, if you wish."

"How has he built up the church?" Langmaid demanded

"How? How does any clergyman buildup a church

"I don't know," Langmaid confessed. "It strikes me as quite a tour de
force in these days. Does he manage to arouse enthusiasm for orthodox
Christianity?"

"Well," said Gerard Whitely, "I think the service appeals. We've made it
as beautiful as possible. And then Mr. Hodder goes to see these people
and sits up with them, and they tell him their troubles. He's reformed
one or two rather bad cases. I suppose it's the man's personality."

Ah! Langmaid exclaimed, "now you're talking!"

"I can't see what you're driving at," confessed his brother-in-law.
"You're too deep for me, Nelson."

If the truth be told, Langmaid himself did not quits see. On behalf
of the vestry, he offered next day to Mr. Hodder the rectorship of St.
John's and that offer was taken under consideration; but there was in
the lawyer's mind no doubt of the acceptance, which, in the course of a
fortnight after he had returned to the West, followed.

By no means a negligible element in Nelson Langmaid's professional
success had been his possession of what may called a sixth sense,
and more than once, on his missions of trust, he had listened to its
admonitory promptings.

At times he thought he recognized these in his conversation with the
Reverend John Hodder at Bremerton,--especially in that last interview in
the pleasant little study of the rectory overlooking Bremerton Lake. But
the promptings were faint, and Langmaid out of his medium. He was not
choosing the head of a trust company.

He himself felt the pull of the young clergyman's personality, and
instinctively strove to resist it: and was more than ever stru