drawn his breath for the conflict.  His teeth are set—­his weapon is in his hand—­you will see the result within a year.  We shall have a government in power, a government whose power will not be dependent on the faddists and the self-seekers—­the ignorant, the blatant bellowers of pitiful platitudes, the platform loafers who call themselves labor-leaders, but whom the real laborers repudiate.  Mark my words, their doom is sealed; back to the desert and the ditch!  My dear Holland, pardon this digression.  I feel that I need say nothing more to you than I have already said.  The surprise system of therapeutics is not suited to the existing ailments of the Church.  Caution is what is needed if you would not defeat your own worthy object, which, I know, is to give fresh vitality to the Church.”

“That is certainly my object, my lord; only let me say that—­”

“My dear Holland, I will not let you say anything.  I asked you to come here this morning in order that you might hear me.  That is all that is necessary for the present.  Perhaps, upon some future occasion, I may have the privilege of hearing you in a discourse of some greater length than that which I have just inflicted upon you.  I have given you my candid opinion of your writings, and you know that is the opinion of a man who has but one object in life—­you know that it is the opinion of an old man who has seen the beginning and the end of many movements in society and in the Church, and who has learned that the Church, for all her decrepitude, is yet the most stable thing that the world has seen.  I have to thank you for coming to me, Holland.”

“Your lordship has spoken to me with the greatest kindness,” said George Holland, as his spiritual father offered him his hand.

In a few minutes he was in his hansom once more.

CHAPTER XXIX.

I KNOW THAT IT DOESN’T MATTER MUCH TO GOD WHAT A MAN THINKS ABOUT HIMSELF OR HIS SOUL.

For the next hour and a half the Rev. George Holland had an opportunity of considering his position as a clergyman of the Church of England, and as one whose chief desire was to advance the interests of the Church.  His bishop had assumed that he had been single-minded in his aims—­that his sole object in writing that book and that paper had been to cure the complaint from which the old Church was suffering.  His lordship had done him justice where Phyllis had done him a gross injustice.  What would Phyllis have said he wondered, if she had heard that concession, made not under pressure, but voluntarily by probably the highest authority in the world, to his, George Holland’s, singleness of aim?