to be squared.  Say,” he demanded aggressively, “are Parr and Langmaid any better than Beatty, or any of the hold-up men Beatty covers?  There’s a street-walker over there in those flats that’s got a million times more chance to get to heaven—­if there is any—­than those financiers, as they call ’emselves —­I ain’t much on high finance, but I’ve got some respect for a second story man now—­he takes some risks!  I’ll tell you what they did, they bought up the short car lines that didn’t pay and sold ’em to themselves for fifty times as much as they were worth; and they got controlling interests in the big lines and leased ’em to themselves with dividends guaranteed as high as eighteen per cent.  They capitalized the Consolidated for more millions than a little man like me can think of, and we handed ’em our money because we thought they were honest.  We thought the men who listed the stock on the Exchange were honest.  And when the crash came, they’d got away with the swag, like any common housebreakers.  There were dummy directors, and a dummy president.  Eldon Parr didn’t have a share—­sold out everything when she went over two hundred, but you bet he kept his stock in the leased lines, which guarantee more than they earn.  He cleaned up five million, they say....  My money—­the money that might give that boy fresh air, and good doctors ....Say, you believe in hell, don’t you?  You tell Eldon Parr to keep his charity,—­he can’t send any of it in here.  And you’d better go back to that church of his and pray to keep his soul out of hell.” . . .

His voice, which had risen even to a higher pitch, fell silent.  And all at once, without warning, Garvin sank, or rather tumbled upon the bed, sobbing in a way that was terrible to see.  The wife stole across the room, sat down beside him, and laid her hand on his shoulder. . . .

In spite of the intensity of his own anguish, Hodder was conscious of a curious detachment; and for months afterward particular smells, the sight of a gasoline stove, a certain popular tune gave him a sharp twinge of pain.  The acid distilling in his soul etched the scene, the sounds, the odours forever in his memory:  a stale hot wind from the alley rattled the shutter-slats, and blew the door to; the child stirred; and above the strident, irregular weeping rose main, in ironical contrast, the piano and the voice across the yard.  In that glimpse he had into the heart of life’s terrible mystery he momentarily understood many things:  he knew that behind the abandon of the woman’s song was the same terror which reigned in the room in which he stood . . . .

There were voices in the passageway without, a woman saying in a German accent,—­“It is here, sir.”

There was a knock at the door . . . .

CHAPTER XI

THE LOST PARISHIONER

I