y years younger than I, and, moreover, have been springing
downhill while I have been toiling laboriously up--" He glanced down
at his club foot.

--"That I took duty for you and did the long-windedness," put in the
Vicar with a laugh. "And I haven't quite finished yet. The idea is
(I should add) that, as in politics, so with our religious
differences, we all declare a truce of God. In Heaven's name let us
all pull together for once and forget our separation of creeds!"

The Minister rubbed his eyes gently; for the trouble, after all,
seemed to be with them and not with his spectacles.

"And I ought to add," said he, "that the first suggestion of such a
Committee came from the ladies of my congregation. The only credit I
can claim is for a certain obstinacy in resisting those who would
have confined the effort to our Society. . . . Most happily I managed
to prevail--and it was none the easier because I happen just now to
be a little out of odour with some of the more influential members of
what I suppose must be termed my 'flock.'"

"Yes: I heard that your sermon last Sunday had caused a scandal.
What was it you said? That, in a breakdown of Christianity like the
present, we might leave talk of the public-houses and usefully
consider Sunday closing of churches and chapels--or something of the
sort."

"Was it in that form the report reached you?" the Minister asked with
entire gravity. "There is an epigrammatist abroad in Polpier, and I
have never been able to trace him--or her. But it is the truth--and
it may well have leaked out in my discourse--that I feel our services
to have lost their point and our ministrations their savour. . . .
I--I beg your pardon," he corrected himself: "I should have said
'_my_ ministrations.'"

"Not at all. . . . Do you suppose I have not been feeling with you--
that all our business has suddenly turned flat, stale, unprofitable?"

"It is a natural discouragement. . . . Let us own it to none until we
have found our hearts again. I see now that even that hint of it in
my sermon was a momentary lapse of loyalty. Meanwhile I clutch on
this proposal of yours. It will give us all what we most want--a
sense of being useful."

The Vicar stepped back a pace and eyed him. Then, on an impulse--

"Hambly," he said, "you have to hear Confession. I am going to tell
you something I have kept secret even from my wife. . . . I have
written to the Bishop asking his permission to volu