ne else, and I don't know him today half as well
as you do."

"I didn't manage it," said Hodder, briefly.

"Well," replied the lawyer, quizzically, "you needn't eat me up. I'm
sure you didn't do it on purpose. If you had,--to use a Hibernian
phrase,--you never would have done it. I've seen it tried before. To
tell you the truth, after I'd come back from Bremerton, that was the one
thing I was afraid of--that you mightn't get along with him."

Hodder himself was at a loss to account for the relationship. It
troubled him vaguely, for Mr. Parr was the aggressor; and often at dusk,
when Hodder was working under his study lamp, the telephone would ring,
and on taking down the receiver he would hear the banker's voice. "I'm
alone to-night, Mr. Hodder. Will you come and have dinner with me?"

Had he known it, this was a different method of communication than that
which the financier usually employed, one which should have flattered
him. If Wallis Plimpton, for instance, had received such a personal
message, the fact would not have remained unknown the next day at his
club. Sometimes it was impossible for Hodder to go, and he said so; but
he always went when he could.

The unwonted note of appeal (which the telephone seemed somehow to
enhance) in Mr. Parr's voice, never failed to find a response in the
rector's heart, and he would ponder over it as he walked across to Tower
Street to take the electric car for the six-mile trip westward.

This note of appeal he inevitably contrasted with the dry,
matter-of-fact reserve of his greeting at the great house, which loomed
all the greater in the darkness. Unsatisfactory, from many points of
view, as these evenings were, they served to keep whetted Hodder's
curiosity as to the life of this extraordinary man. All of its vaster
significance for the world, its tremendous machinery, was out of his
sight.

Mr. Parr seemed indeed to regard the rest of his fellow-creatures with
the suspicion at which Langmaid had hinted, to look askance at the
amenities people tentatively held out to him. And the private
watchman whom Hodder sometimes met in the darkness, and who invariably
scrutinized pedestrians on Park Street, seemed symbolic, of this
attitude. On rare occasions, when in town, the financier dined out,
limiting himself to a few houses.

Once in a long while he attended what are known as banquets, such as
those given by the Chamber of Commerce, though he generally refused
to speak.