r was silent. The thought struck him with tremendous force. Had he
suggested it? And how--why? Could it be done? Could he do it or begin
it?

"We have met at last in a singular way," he heard Mr. Bentley going on,
"in a way that has brushed aside the conventions, in a way--I am happy to
say--that has enabled you to give me your confidence. And I am an old
man,--that has made it easier. I saw this afternoon, Mr. Hodder, that
you were troubled, although you tried to hide it."

"I knew that you saw it," Hodder said.

"Nor was it difficult for me to guess something of the cause of it. The
same thing has troubled me."

"You?"

"Yes," Mr. Bentley answered. "I left St. John's, but the habits and
affections of a lifetime are not easily severed. And some time before
I left it I began to have visions of a future for it. There was a
question, many years ago, as to whether a new St. John's should not be
built in the West End, on a site convenient to the parishioners, and this
removal I opposed. Mr. Waring stood by me. We foresaw the day when
this district would be--what it is now--the precarious refuge of the
unfortunate in the battle of life, of just such unhappy families as the
Garvins, of miserable women who sell themselves to keep alive. I thought
of St. John's, as you did, as an oasis in a desert of misery and vice.
At that time I, too, believed in the system of charities which you have
so well characterized as pauperizing."

"And now?"

Mr. Bentley smiled, as at a reminiscence.

"My eyes were opened," he replied, and in these simple words summed up
and condemned it all. "They are craving bread, and we fling them atones.
I came here. It was a house I owned, which I saved from the wrecks, and
as I look back upon what the world would call a misfortune, sir, I can
see that it was a propitious event, for me. The street 'ran down,'
as the saying goes. I grew gradually to know these people, my new
neighbours, largely through their children, and I perceived many things
I had not dreamed of--before then. I saw how the Church was hampered,
fettered; I saw why they disliked and distrusted it."

"And yet you still believed that it had a mission?" Hodder interrupted.
He had been listening with rapt attention.

"I still believed it," said Mr. Bentley. "My conception of that mission
changed, grew, and yet it seemed further and further from fulfilment.
And then you came to St. John's."

"I!" The cry was involuntary.

"You," M