nd laid it on the
table. "It's a matter," he said, looking into McCrae's eyes, "of freeing
this church from those who now hold it in chains. And the two questions,
I see clearly now, the doctrinal and the economic, are so interwoven as
to be inseparable. My former, ancient presentation of Christianity left
men and women cold. It did not draw them into this church and send them
out again fired with the determination to bring religion into everyday
life, resolved to do their part in the removal of the injustices and
cruelties with which we are surrounded, to bring Christianity into
government, where it belongs. Don't misunderstand me I'm not going to
preach politics, but religion."

"I don't misunderstand ye," answered McCrae. He leaned a little forward,
staring at the rector from behind his steel spectacles with a glance
which had become piercing.

"And I am going to discourage a charity which is a mockery of
Christianity," Hodder went on, "the spectacle of which turns thousands
of men and women in sickening revolt against the Church of Christ
to-day. I have discovered, at last, how some of these persons have made
their money, and are making it. And I am going to let them know, since
they have repudiated God in their own souls, since they have denied the
Christian principle of individual responsibility, that I, as the vicar
of God, will not be a party to the transaction of using the Church as a
means of doling out ill-gotten gains to the poor."

"Mr. Parr!" McCrae exclaimed.

"Yes," said the rector, slowly, and with a touch of sadness, "since you
have mentioned him, Mr. Parr. But I need not say that this must go no
farther. I am in possession of definite facts in regard to Mr. Parr
which I shall present to him when he returns."

"Ye'll tell him to his face?"

"It is the only way."

McCrae had risen. A remarkable transformation had come over the man,--he
was reminiscent, at that moment, of some Covenanter ancestor going into
battle. And his voice shook with excitement.

"Ye may count on me, Mr. Hodder," he cried. "These many years I've
waited, these many years I've seen what ye see now, but I was not the
man. Aye, I've watched ye, since the day ye first set foot in this
church. I knew what was going on inside of ye, because it was just that
I felt myself. I hoped--I prayed ye might come to it."

The sight of this taciturn Scotchman, moved in this way, had an
extraordinary effect on Hodder himself, and his own e