him cordially and even familiarly about their affairs. They liked and
trusted him--on a tacit condition. There was a boundary he might not
cross. And the existence of that boundary did not seem to trouble
McCrae.

One night as he stood with his assistant in the hall after the men had
gone, Hodder could contain himself no longer.

"Look here, McCrae," he broke out, "these men never come to church--or
only a very few of them."

"No more they do," McCrae agreed.

"Why don't they?"

"Ye've asked them, perhaps."

"I've spoken to one or two of them," admitted the rector.

"And what do they tell you?"

Hodder smiled.

"They don't tell me anything. They dodge."

"Precisely," said McCrae.

"We're not making Christians of them," said Hodder, beginning to walk up
and down. "Why is it?"

"It's a big question."

"It is a big question. It's the question of all questions, it seems to
me. The function of the Church, in my opinion, is to make Christians."

"Try to teach them religion," said McCrae--he almost pronounced it
releegion--"and see what happens. Ye'll have no classes at all. They
only come, the best of them, because ye let them alone that way, and they
get a little decency and society help. It's somewhat to keep them out of
the dance-halls and saloons maybe."

"It's not enough," the rector asserted. "You've had a great deal of
experience with them. And I want to know why, in your view, more of them
don't come into the Church."

"Would ye put Jimmy Flanagan and Otto Bauer and Tony Baldassaro in Mr.
Parr's pew?" McCrae inquired, with a slight flavour of irony that was
not ill-natured. "Or perhaps Mrs. Larrabbee would make room for them?"

"I've considered that, of course," replied Hodder, thoughtfully, though
he was a little surprised that McCrae should have mentioned it. "You
think their reasons are social, then,--that they feel the gap. I feel it
myself most strongly. And yet none of these men are Socialists. If they
were, they wouldn't come here to the parish house."

"They're not Socialists," agreed McCrae.

"But there is room in the back and sides of the church, and there is the
early service and the Sunday night service, when the pews are free. Why
don't they come to these?"

"Religion doesn't appeal to them."

"Why not?"

"Ye've asked me a riddle. All I know is that the minute ye begin to
preach, off they go and never come back."

Hodder, with unconscious fixity, looked into his assistant's