m now
with a strong sympathy and curiosity.

"Well," replied Mr. Engel, "I'm glad to hear you say that." He
restrained a gasp. Was this the orthodox Mr. Hodder of St. John's?

"Why," said Hodder, sitting down, "I've learned, as you have, by
experience. Only my experience hasn't been so hopeful as yours--that is,
if you regard yours as hopeful. It would be hypocritical of me not to
acknowledge that the churches are losing ground, and that those who
ought to be connected with them are not. I am ready to admit that the
churches are at fault. But what you tell me of people reading these
books gives me more courage than I have had for--for some time."

"Is it so!" ejaculated the little man, relapsing into the German idiom
of his youth.

"It is," answered the rector, with an emphasis not to be denied. "I wish
you would give me your theory about this phenomenon, and speak frankly."

"But I thought--" the bewildered librarian began. "I saw you had been
reading those books, but I thought--"

"Naturally you did," said Holder, smiling. His personality, his
ascendency, his poise, suddenly felt by the other, were still more
confusing. "You thought me a narrow, complacent, fashionable priest who
had no concern as to what happened outside the walls of his church, who
stuck obstinately to dogmas and would give nothing else a hearing. Well,
you were right."

"Ah, I didn't think all that," Mr. Engel protested, and his parchment
skin actually performed the miracle of flushing. "I am not so stupid.
And once, long ago when I was young, I was going to be a minister
myself."

"What prevented you?" asked Holder, interested.

"You want me to be frank--yes, well, I couldn't take the vows." The
brown eyes of the quiet, humorous, self-contained and dried-up custodian
of the city's reading flamed up. "I felt the call," he exclaimed. "You
may not credit it to look at me now, Mr. Hodder. They said to me, 'here
is what you must swear to believe before you can make men and women
happier and more hopeful, rescue them from sin and misery!' You know
what it was."

Hodder nodded.

"It was a crime. It had nothing to do with religion. I thought it over
for a year--I couldn't. Oh, I have since been thankful. I can see now
what would have happened to me--I should have had fatty degeneration of
the soul."

The expression was not merely forcible, it was overwhelming. It brought
up before Holder's mind, with sickening reality, the fate he had hims